Summary: AU fic. Some of the Marines lived long enough to get off Acheron, but it seems the Company won't let them go. Following Newt's disappearance and the discovery of a nest of aliens in the heart of Gateway, Hicks and the other surviving Marines from Acheron are swept into a battle between two warring factions who can agree on only one thing: that they want all survivors from Acheron dead as soon as possible.
Categories: Alien Quadrilogy Movies Characters: Dwayne Hicks, Scott Gorman, Rebecca "Newt" Jorden, Jenette Vasquez
Genres: Action, Adventure, Alternate Universe, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Warnings: Profanity, Violence
Challenges:
Series: None
Chapters: 6 Completed: No
Word count: 68114 Read: 3471
Published: 27 May 2006 Updated: 14 Jul 2013
1. Chapter 1 by Jude
2. Chapter 2 by Jude
3. Chapter 3 by Jude
4. Chapter 4 by Jude
5. Chapter 5 by Jude
6. Chapter 6 by Jude

The tiny ship hurtled through the black void of space, a void filled with more worlds, stars, solar systems, suns, asteroids and black holes than Man could ever hope to count in a thousand centuries.
Well...
Alright, so you can't have a black void full of all this, because then it wouldn't be a void, but as far as black, infinite things go, space is still pretty damn voidy.
On the blackness, stars streaked past in their thousands, almost too fast to count.
Dwayne Hicks snorted and looked away at the reality. He'd have to do something about that space screensaver; it was really starting to annoy him.
The reality of space travel was that for the distances you had to travel, no matter how fast you went, you never seemed to move very fast. It was like flying in an airplane; you knew you were going a hell of a lot faster than you could in a car, but looking out the window seemed to reduce that speed to a crawl.
Hicks let out his breath with a whoosh, lips pressed together slightly, tapping a pen on the ship's dashboard, giving the impression that he was deep in thought.
He was, in fact, bored out of his mind. Five days on a ship that had no books, no video facilities and nothing to while away the hours would tax even the dullest wit. Hicks was seriously starting to wonder whether he should have waited a few weeks to accept Hudson's invitation to come and visit; that way he could at least have taken the shuttle.
Hicks sighed, still tapping the pen, looking around out the windows. He couldn't even hop in a freezer; he was the only one flying the ship, and although it was mainly on autopilot, Spunkmeyer had given him a list of instructions on what to do if he ran into difficulties.
Hicks glanced at the nav-screens, then abruptly took a plastic calling card from his pocket and snapped it into the phone. It buzzed several times before Spunkmeyer finally answered, clearly just out of bed.
"Yeah? Wha-oh, it's you."
"Yeah," Hicks said. "I think I've got a slight problem."
"You mean like you did at three thirty five a.m., four oh five a.m., five fifteen a.m. and six thirty a.m?" Spunkmeyer said waspishly.
Hicks at least had the grace to colour. "I think the engine's making a noise."
Spunkmeyer yawned. "It's s'posed to. It's when it cuts out completely you need to worry."
"What happens then?"
"In space, you drift. In atmosphere of planet, short sharp trip to surface. Can I go back to sleep now?"
"No, I mean it's making a kind of metallic clinking."
Spunkmeyer woke up slightly at that. "What kind of 'clinking'?"
"Like coins in a washer."
"Y're not goin' through 'n ast'roid belt, are you?" the pilot said, failing to stifle another yawn.
"No."
Spunkmeyer paused mid-yawn, remembering something he'd done at the academy. "Dwayne...this is just a theory, you understand, but I need you to do three things for me."
Despite himself, Hicks felt the first twinge of concern. "Is it bad news?"
"It'll be very bad if you don't do exactly what I tell you, particularly the last step."
Hicks raised an eyebrow. "Okay. Shoot."
"One. Open your glove compartment. Two. Take out your dog tags stroke keys stroke anything metal that's probably rattling around. Three. Hang up!"
Hicks fumbled with the catch on the glove compartment, finally pulling it open and catching sight of the child's bracelet in there. He paused, then closed it again.
"Thanks. I think I'll leave it," he said quietly.
"Yeah...sure...wha'ever..." Spunkmeyer yawned. "Look, if you're bored, call Will or someone."
"I can't. It's three in the morning where he is."
Spunkmeyer shut his mouth with a snap, glaring at Hicks. "Oh, so it's alright for me to be woken up at some ungodly hour but when it comes to Hudson-"
"Okay. Okay." Hicks sighed and gave in. "I'll stay off the com unless it's a matter of life and death. Happy now?"
"Sweet." Spunkmeyer reached out and cut the connection.
Hicks shook his head ruefully. Well, at least that had killed...oh, all of five minutes. He sat back and tried to empty his mind. Like always, he felt memories rush in to fill the gap instead. Reaching up, he rubbed the marks on his face irritably. The scars there had been removed, but the area still itched like hell.
They'd made it off Acheron in the end. The ones who had made it out of the reactor room had stayed in Operations for a while. Spunkmeyer had managed to jump clear when the dropship crashed, although it had been too late for Ferro.
Hicks paused in his thoughts. The main turning point had been when Apone and Dietrich had staggered in, hadn't it? Neither of them would say exactly what had happened, but Hicks knew they couldn't have made it so far on their own. Then...there had been that incident with the facehuggers, hadn't there? Burke had apparently been trying to loose them on the others, only to have one turn around and clamp itself over his face instead.
Hicks' gaze darkened. Shame about the other three, really, as Vasquez would have said. A real shame from the smartgun operator's point of view, since one of those three had fastened itself onto her. The other two had latched onto Gorman and Ripley respectively, and the three affected had been loaded onto the dropship in the hopes that someone back on Earth could do something for them.
They'd left Burke, though. Best place for him, and a pretty fitting end as well. Once back on Gateway, surgeons had done their best to extricate the alien embryos. The others had got the results the next day; Ripley and Gorman had both died during the operation and Vasquez shortly afterwards.
Hicks sighed. With Ripley gone, Newt had latched onto him like a limpet, but now Newt had disappeared. A slightly sad smile touched Hicks' lips.
"Sorry Ellen," he said aloud. "Guess I didn't do such a good job protecting her after all."
He hadn't given up, though. Wouldn't, not until he'd found Newt again. That was partly the reason he hadn't cancelled his visit to Hudson and Dietrich; the two of them ran a bar in one of the most popular locations with tourists from all over. If you got gossip anywhere, it was in a bar, surely?
Hicks' smile became a little more genuine. Maybe actually having his dream bar would finally shut Hudson up; he'd been going on about it for as long as Hicks had known him. He shook his head wryly. As Dietrich had once said, you couldn't shut Hudson up unless you decapitated him and buried his head under six feet of concrete. And even then, only maybe.
Hicks glanced at his watch. This time tomorrow he should be at Hudson's place, barring accidents. If he had sleeping pills, he might have popped a couple just to get him there, but that was out of the question. With a sigh he leaned back, picked up a Martina Cole novel - one of the few books he'd thought to bring - and started to read it for the third time. Maybe if he tried reading aloud it would make the time go a little faster.
The living area was surprisingly large for Gateway quarters. A fair-sized kitchen equipped with the latest gadgetry led into a spacious living room which had a three-piece suite upholstered in dark brown leather and a deep blue carpet, along with a large computer, a virt-real simulator, a TV wall and a huge selection of DVDs, mostly horror and action. There were some books on a shelf, but not many; whoever lived here wasn't exactly into reading. There were also three rooms off the living room; two good-sized bedrooms, one study/gym area full of workout equipment. This last wasn't standard issue, but Gateway had rapidly discovered that if this person didn't get some strenuous physical activity at least twice a day, they had the tendency to bench press the first person to come through the doors or, failing that, smash the place to pieces. In short, this was a big, luxurious, almost penthouse apartment.
Vasquez hated it.
She supposed it could be worse. The Company didn't have to keep her here; they could just as easily have thrown her in a four by four cell and tossed the key in the garbage compactor. This was probably the most lavish prison cell ever designed; certainly one of the most expensive and comfortable.
But it was still a prison cell.
There were little signs. No phone, for one thing. No internet access on the computer. She could leave the apartment to visit others in the same corridor-which was circular and at least two kilometres long, all told-but she couldn't leave the corridor itself, and frankly had no desire to pay social calls. Vasquez wasn't a great one for being friendly and had no idea who her neighbours happened to be. For their part, they avoided her as much as possible; Marines commanded a lot of respect, and there was the chance that this particular Marine could decide she didn't like your face and subsequently rearrange it.
This wasn't strictly true. Vasquez spent too much time training in her makeshift gym to care about ordinary brawls. Part of this was due to the need to keep Marine-fit, but there was another, more fundamental reason; when she trained hard, she slept hard. When she slept hard, she didn't dream. When she didn't dream, she didn't see Drake's face being boiled away by acid, or the facehugger that had come for her.
She didn't know what had happened after that. She supposed she must have hit her head or something...she just remembered waking up in this place aching all over. It had taken her a week to get back into the old routine and another fortnight before she was back in shape. About the only good thing to have come of that was knowing for sure she hadn't been impregnated. She supposed Hicks or Hudson must have blasted the facehugger away or something.
The door buzzer jerked her attention away from the chin-up bar and the past, and she dropped onto the ground, sweating lightly, and glanced at the clock. Four thirty. Jesus. She'd been working out, seemingly unaware, for three and a half hours.
The buzzer sounded again and Vasquez swore before crossing over to the front door and yanking it open.
"Yeah? What?"
If the man on the other side of the door was taken aback by her abruptness, he hid it well. "Juana Vasquez?"
"Who wants to know?" Vasquez said automatically.
The man smiled, reminding the smartgun operator uncomfortably of Burke. "My name is Sam McDermott; I've been asked to bring you to Mr Russell's office for a formal meeting."
Vasquez didn't move. "'Formal meeting'? That wouldn't be anything like a court martial, would it?"
McDermott gave a creditable imitation of surprise. "No. Of course not. Why?"
Vasquez narrowed her eyes. "Fine. I assume I'm allowed to get dressed first?"
McDermott looked at his watch, giving every impression of being a harried man. "Two minutes."
"Fine." Vasquez slammed the door in his face and waited until five of those minutes had ticked off the digital clock on the wall before going through and pulling on her combat fatigues, dog tags and trademark bandanna, then lay down on her bed and read a couple of articles in the latest issue of Guns Magazine before returning to the front door and opening it again.
McDermott fixed her with a look he fondly imagined to be steely. "I said two, not twenty."
Vasquez, who was already striding down the corridor, shot a look over her shoulder. "I'll let you know when I start to care."
"And your attire is hardly suitable," McDermott added, panting slightly as he rushed to catch up. He regretted it instantly as Vasquez turned to stare at him.
"It was suitable for Acheron. It was suitable to save your asses. It's suitable for this and until I'm court-martialled, I'm going to keep wearing it. Any problems, you can kiss my ass."
"Yes, we noticed you hadn't made use of the clothes we provided," McDermott said, somewhat sniffily.
Vasquez didn't bother dignifying that with an answer. The wardrobes had been stocked with several outfits, ranging from the casual to the clubbing. The problem hadn't been the design; they were pretty much what Vasquez herself would have picked out. That was what was unnerving her. Whoever had put her in that apartment had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to research her personal tastes, which meant they had access to some pretty hard to get files.
"Just for the record as well, the napkins we provided are just that, not dusters."
"What the hell else did you expect me to do with them? I'm hardly going to host dinner parties, am I...or if I do, they'd still be no good."
"Yes." The faintest trace of disdain flickered across McDermott's face. "If it doesn't come in a cardboard box, you don't want to eat it, do you?"
"You're pushing your luck, asshole!" Vasquez said sharply, then, "And how do you know what I used them for, anyway?"
There was a sudden awkward silence. "You have to understand," McDermott said, edging away from the smartgun operator slightly, "it's out of my hands. I can do nothing about it."
"Are there hidden cameras in my apartment?!"
"Like I said-" now McDermott was so far away they were walking on opposite sides of the corridor "-it's not my decision, I had nothing to do with it-"
Vasquez froze for a few seconds. "If you don't tell me honestly that you kept them out of the bathroom and bedroom, I will break your fucking arm the first chance I get!" she said.
McDermott eyed her nervously. Her expression was cold, and he knew it wouldn't change much if she decided to make good on her threat either. He cast around frantically for an angle he could use to defuse the situation and decided, for a change, to try the truth.
"I can't tell you that. I'm sorry."
The punch rocked his head back on his neck to hit the wall with a resounding clang. Vasquez heard the other residents in the corridor stop dead, staring. Fuck 'em. The smartgun operator was prepared to bet that each and every one of them had been itching to do something similar.
The door to one of the apartments crashed open at that moment, and a pair of security guards armed with electronic stunners strode out. Vasquez didn't hesitate. Instead, she took a step forward and drove her fist into one guard's stomach almost hard enough to punch right through it, grabbed his stunner as he doubled over and spun around to zap the second on the neck. He fell, still conscious but unable to control his arms and legs. Vasquez dropped the stunner and whirled to plant a foot squarely in the other man's elbow. There was a sound like someone putting their foot through a rotten log and he dropped to the ground, howling in pain and clutching the shattered joint. Vasquez straightened up, tossed the stunner into the now rapidly enlarging crowd and turned to McDermott.
"Alright. Get moving, if you still want me to come to this meeting of yours."
McDermott, whose skin had turned a sickly grey and who was clearly struggling not to throw up, swallowed several times. "Y-yes. Yes. Uh. Yes. We can...we can go." He closed his eyes. "You, uh, you know I'll have to report this," he added, in the tones of one who devoutly hopes he hasn't just proclaimed his own epitaph.
"Right," Vasquez sneered. "You do that. Call in the Marines, because they're the only ones you can persuade me to listen to."
"There are another eighteen guards on this security force," someone from the crowd put in tentatively, "and... and...uh..."
Someone who had a better view of Vasquez' face added, "And am I the only one who's getting the feeling that that really isn't going to matter very much?"
"They're right." Wiping blood away from a split lip, McDermott lurched off the wall. "If you persist in this fruitless violence, I'll have no choice but to call them to this sector."
Vasquez smirked. "Go ahead, pendejo. Make my day."
McDermott opened his mouth to do just that, then hesitated and closed it again reluctantly. The guys in this sector were bog-standard security guards, and none of them were capable of taking on a Colonial Marine. All of them together would probably do it, but not without some serious injuries being sustained. Better to wait. He'd have to do something though; the last thing the Company wanted was for anyone to run away with the idea that they could beat up on any security guards they pleased. Particularly in this sector.
Benjamin Russell had worked for the Company all his life. He'd started at intern level and clawed his way up the ranks until he'd got to where he was now; a senior marketing director for the Colonial Administration Bureau. Then the HR manager for this particular area had taken two weeks' vacation and Russell had been called to stand in for him. So far he'd dealt with fourteen complaints, three brawls in the corridor and eight technicalities and he felt, perhaps rightly enough, that he shouldn't have to deal with the likes of Vasquez as well. Most people dressed in their smartest clothes to try and make a good impression on him. A young woman wearing what looked like combat gear right down to the boots and a red bandanna who walked in as if she owned the place was new to him.
Still...business was business. Russell put on his best professional expression.
"Good afternoon. I'm glad you could make it on such short notice."
Vasquez snorted. "Hey man, it's not like there's much else to do. I could take a run round the corridor, but you know, that gets a little dull after the first five laps."
"Yes, well, we aren't equipped with such luxuries as a track," he said.
Vasquez shrugged. "I dunno. That corridor works pretty well."
"I suppose it would. And...ah..." He frowned slightly as Vasquez sat down on the chair opposite without waiting for an invitation. "Please, have a seat."
"I will." Vasquez leaned back in the office chair and propped her feet on the desk, crossing them at the ankles, picking up the nameplate in front of her and using it to clean under her fingernails, more for effect than any feminine interest in her appearance. "What do you want?"
"I would appreciate it if you could remove your boots from my desk," Russell said frigidly.
"And I would appreciate it if you would let me out of this hellhole of a station," Vasquez mocked, "but it don't look like either of us are going to get what we want, does it?"
Russell looked hurt. "Anyone would think we were holding you prisoner."
Vasquez looked him straight in the eye. "Aren't you?"
"No."
"Good. Then give me my jodido keycard and let me get a shuttle out of here."
Russell looked somewhat awkward. "I'm afraid we can't do that just yet. You see-"
"Don't bullshit me!" Abruptly Vasquez was on her feet, her chair crashing to the ground behind her. "Unlike your fucking Company, I've done nothing wrong!"
Russell's grey eyes changed, went from conciliatory to flinty in a remarkably short space of time. "If you haven't, then it would probably be the first time, wouldn't it?" He slid a thick file towards him. "Let's just take a look at your records, shall we? Mother, Ira Menezes-Vasquez, deceased, father Jose Vasquez, currently in prison on a charge of alcohol and drug abuse as well as GBH. You were the fourth in a family of six girls - no boys - your oldest sister, Mercedes, was murdered by a...what did you call them? Oh yes, a punter while working as a prostitute. Not intimidated by this little face, your next oldest sisters, Sofia and Bernadita, followed the same path. I gather they're still in and out of rehab for drugs and drink. They do it for a week or two, then give it up and go back on the streets until some other kind soul picks them up again."
Vasquez was by now so angry it took all her strength to keep from losing her temper and slugging him. "What," she said through clenched teeth "has any of that to do with this?"
Russell raised a hand, displaying perfectly manicured nails. "I'm coming to that, if you'll be good enough not to interrupt me. Your younger sister, Anita, decided to go another route and was arrested for burglary ten months after Mercedes' death. This soon got upgraded to ABH after she tried to stab the arresting officer with a broken off chair leg and she was sentenced to ten years in juvenile. When she turned eighteen - six weeks ago - she was taken to a penitentiary to serve out the rest of her sentence which I gather she was already more than halfway through."
"What's your point?" Vasquez said tightly.
"Your record is hardly clean, is it? I gather your mother was a prostitute as well."
"What if she was?" Vasquez sneered. Although her mother had died when she was eleven, everyone in the family had known exactly what she was.
"Out of all your family, the only one who hasn't yet been arrested or participated in any kind of illegal activity is your youngest sister. I gather she enlisted in the USCM as soon as she turned sixteen."
Vasquez shook her head. "No. That's not possible. Carmen had brains; she'd never do anything as dumb as that."
"She did as soon as news reached her of your death."
"My what?"
"You were reported dead on Acheron."
"By whom?"
"We thought it might be for the best...rather than build up false hopes...you were in a near-critical state when you arr-" Russell's words ended in a gurgle as the smartgun operator lunged across the table without warning and gripped him around the throat with one hand.
"Then you can fucking well tell everyone I'm alive!"
Russell choked and Vasquez eased the hold very slightly. "It...wasn't...my...decision," he managed to get out. Vasquez released him abruptly and stepped back.
"Then whose decision was it?"
"Never mind that now. I was just instructed to bring you up to speed on current affairs."
Vasquez took one or two deep breaths. "Look, this isn't proving anything except that you obviously think you know a lot about my family. Why am I here?"
"You are here because we have located one other member of the Acheron expedition. One who, shall we say, is extremely reluctant to cooperate and who is adamant that they won't help us until we bring in Dwayne Hicks."
Vasquez snorted. "And you want me to tell you where he is? Sorry, man. I've no idea, and even if I did I wouldn't tell someone like you."
"You really aren't helping your case."
"Didn't know there was one. Are you going to give me that shuttle or not?"
"No, for two reasons. Firstly, I doubt we'd get it back. Secondly, you don't have a pilot's licence, and never have."
"I've flown before," Vasquez said coldly.
"If you're referring to your exploits before you were conscripted you're absolutely right," Russell said implacably, "you were higher than any shuttle could ever go. You have done just about everything your sisters have done, and more. GBH, drug abuse, drug dealing, seventeen counts of mugging and approximately two weeks on the game before killing one of your punters, not necessarily in that order either."
Missed a couple, Vasquez thought irritably.
"You claimed self-defence for that last incident and for some reason the court found in your favour-"
"It was self-defence!" Angered into speaking, Vasquez surged to her feet again. "The bastard had a gun!"
"Yes," Russell said calmly. "I think it best we not go into exactly what he wanted you to do with it, don't you? You got away with a two year suspended sentence-which, I may add, was incredibly lenient under the circumstances."
That was about the only semi-relevant thing he'd said since this whole hellish meeting had begun, Vasquez thought sourly. At least the only thing he'd said that she agreed with; she'd expected them to lock her up and throw away the key.
"Apparently not satisfied, you then proceeded to get involved with a gang that specialised in joy-riding. You stole a car, went screaming through the streets at speeds that were almost too great to be measured, finally stopping when you ploughed through a family sedan and then only because your vehicle couldn't physically go any further. This little escapade resulted in your being jailed for manslaughter, since the family in the sedan were killed instantly. The only reason you didn't get the death sentence was that you were underage, being just fifteen at the time. You were sentenced to life imprisonment in a state penitentiary but were conscripted into the USCM eighteen months later along with Mark Drake - who, incidentally, went along with you-"
"Leave him out of this," Vasquez said. She didn't raise her voice, but there was a deadly tone in it that made Russell think twice about continuing.
"And two years later, you were sent to Acheron. Your team sustained approximately fifty percent casualties-"
"That wasn't my goddamned fault!" Vasquez yelled, her temper finally snapping. Russell remained unmoved.
"Well, you'd better decide whose fault it was because from where I'm sitting, your irresponsibility in using heavy duty weapons is the reason for the loss of the Acheron colony."
Vasquez leaned forward until they were almost touching. "It's also the reason why that casualty percentage wasn't closer to ninety," she hissed.
"Saving the lives of a few people does not justify the destruction of an entire colony worth of equipment."
"Which was no fucking use after the bugs set in!"
"Ah." Russell appeared extremely satisfied. "Yes. I thought it would somehow come around to this. You are aware that these 'bugs' as you call them do not exist?"
Vasquez jerked back as if she'd been shot. "Yeah, they fucking exist!"
"I doubt it." Russell steepled his fingers together and examined the tips minutely for a minute before looking back up. "I think, if you'll search your memory, you'll remember how the others in your troop died in a freak explosion which you and Private Drake decided to engineer to hide the fact that you had, in fact, been extorting money from it for months. In fact, the main reason you both enlisted was to escape the threat of legal retribution, then when you heard about the mission to Acheron, you decided to cover your own backs. It's just unfortunate that Drake didn't get clear in time."
Vasquez eyed the pen on the man's desk speculatively, wondering how much damage it would do to her case if she were to scoop it up and plunge it into one of those smug grey eyes.
"This is getting us nowhere," she said abruptly. "You have my record. You know what happened."
Russell remained immovable. "That record is on our system and can be altered in a matter of minutes. Listen to me. Those aliens do not exist. The sooner you get that through your head, the sooner you'll be free to go where you like."
Vasquez gritted her teeth, wondering as she did so if this was how Ripley had felt all the time. "Russell, if you don't get this through your fucking head, you won't have one left. Those things are real. They're as real as you and me. They're as real as this station. If you don't believe me, ask any of the others. Ask Hicks, or Hudson, or Apone."
"Nothing has been seen of your troop since shortly after your return. The only reason we were able to help you was because you were still unconscious. Following medical treatment, we placed you here."
"What do you mean, 'here'? What is this place?"
"You're in a secure area of Gateway. It's where we place anyone we aren't sure about."
"Not sure?" Vasquez picked up the nameplate again, this time using it to clean her boots. Not that they needed it; even though she hadn't seen the inside of a barrack room since leaving for Acheron, old habits died hard and her clothes were immaculate. But it bugged the hell out of Russell.
"You were very sick. We've found that people in home-like surroundings recover faster than in the clinical environment of a hospital ward."
It made perfect sense, which was why the smartgun operator didn't believe it for a minute. "What was wrong with me?"
"Space fever."
Vasquez stared at him so coldly that Russell started to squirm. "That's not possible. I was vaccinated last year and that particular one is good for five years."
"Ms Vasquez, I really have no idea how you contracted the disease," Russell said dismissively, "but even you should know that these vaccines aren't always one hundred percent proof. Perhaps the effect was lessened by your prolonged exposure to the alien creatures."
"The ones that don't exist?" Vasquez sneered.
Russell's expression didn't change, didn't even flicker. "Quite. I'm glad you're getting the hang of it."
"You listen to me, culo." Vasquez gripped the lapels of Russell's expensive suit and yanked him forward. "One of my closest friends is lying dead on that hellworld with his face melted and I am not going to sit back and pretend that he died through some kind of fucking mistake! Am I coming through?"
"Loud and clear." Russell gripped Vasquez' wrists and prised her hands off his clothes. As soon as he released her, the smartgun operator stepped back, wiping her hands on her top as if she'd been handling something particularly nasty. Seemingly oblivious, Russell continued.
"If you persist in this scaremongering, you leave me no choice but to sequester you. You may not leave your corridor again until you have learned the difference between fantasy and reality."
"I do. You're the one who seems to have trouble getting your head around that concept." Vasquez shook her head. "Company men, they all seem to have more appendages than brain cells."
Russell stood, his patience finally at an end. "This interview is over!"
"Good."
"Under the circumstances, you will be permitted to continue living in the apartment we have so generously provided you with, however."
Vasquez looked straight into his eyes, but saw no trace of sarcasm. The man was either a really good actor, or he genuinely believed what he was saying.
"There's usually a silver lining to any cloud, after all," he added. "There's good in everything if you look for it."
"Oh yeah, that reminds me," Vasquez said, eyeing him through slitted eyes. "Your proctologist just called. He said to tell you he found your head." She got to her feet, turned and strode to the door.
"This isn't over yet!"
Vasquez didn't turn around. "You're right. It's hardly started."
She strode back to the corridor, not looking back to see if that asshole McDermott was following. She supposed she'd have to answer for what had happened to the security guards, but that didn't worry her. If she was expendable, they wouldn't waste a good apartment on her... and fair's fair, they may have imprisoned her, but at least they'd imprisoned her in luxury.
Once back inside, she went through the apartment systematically, not stopping until she'd found and smashed every single camera in the place. Feeling a little better for that, she flopped down on the couch and picked up the TV guide. Not much on, except a horror movie starting in ten minutes.
Since Acheron, Vasquez usually avoided horror movies, or at least all the ones involving the classic human vs alien storyline. This one looked entertaining enough though; something about the Antichrist at a military academy. If nothing else, it should be interesting...
The buzzer went, dragging Vasquez out of a rare good sleep and she grated her way through a stream of curses that would make a sergeant major blush before forcing her eyes open a crack. It took her a few minutes to work out what had happened; she'd fallen asleep on the couch. Glancing up blearily she saw that the horror movie had given way to some kind of late night chat show.
The buzzer sounded again. Vasquez groaned, then rolled off the couch to land unceremoniously on the floor - it took far less energy than trying to stand - and wearily pulled herself towards the door, not getting up until she was ready to open it.
"McDermott, I told you to-" Vasquez began angrily, before catching sight of her visitor and, for the first time in her life, drying up completely.
"V-Vasquez?"
Vasquez stared. "You?"
Newt hadn't expected a particularly good reception; although she'd made friends with most of the Marines, Vasquez and Drake were two who had almost made a point of ignoring her. But still...any port in a storm. Oddly enough, the less-than-friendly welcome didn't really worry her. Vasquez would probably want to offload her onto Hicks as soon as possible, which suited Newt just fine. The hardest part was going to be convincing Vasquez to shelter her in the first place.
"Uh. Can I come in?" she tried.
"No," Vasquez said, too wrong-footed to soften the blow. "Where's Hicks? Isn't he with you?"
Newt bit her lip. "I'll tell you if I can come in," she bargained quickly.
For a minute Vasquez seriously considered slamming the door in the girl's face, then her curiosity got the better of her and she stepped back without a word, allowing the child in.
"Wow!" Newt looked around in childish awe. "This place is great!"
"Did you come here just to talk about interior decorating?" Vasquez demanded. "If you did, you can get out again; I'm tired."
"N-no, I didn't. I..." Newt's voice trailed off. "I want to find Hicks."
"I'm not stopping you."
"I need your help."
There. She'd said it.
Vasquez snorted. "And you think you're gonna get it? Dream on."
"'S jus'...I think we were brought here by the same people."
Vasquez, whose hand was about to open the door to show-or throw-the kid out, hesitated. If that was true, then it seemed a whole new can of worms had just been opened. A can of worms with the words Weyland-Yutani written on the label, no less.
"What makes you think that?"
Newt shrugged. "Jus' do. I mean, we're both here, aren't we? There must be millions of places in the galaxy but we're both in this one."
The word 'coincidence' screamed up Vasquez' throat until it reached her mouth, where the sheer enormity of the lie forced it to evaporate. "Even if that's true," she said instead, suspicion in her gaze, "why would you come to me?"
"I...uh..." Newt shifted from foot to foot. "C'n I sit down? Please?"
Vasquez regarded her through unfathomable eyes before saying, "Go ahead."
Newt perched on the edge of the sofa, clearly unwilling to relax yet. "I was wondering... maybe, if you don't mind... if I could wait with you until Hicks finds me? Please?"
Vasquez could almost hear the clang as her jaw dropped open. "What?" she said hoarsely.
Newt met her gaze pleadingly, eyes brimming and fixed on the smartgun operator in mute appeal. For a good few minutes, Vasquez just stood and stared. This was due more to simple perplexity than callousness; she honestly had no idea how to proceed. There were some situations that military training just didn't prepare you for, and standing in a penthouse-sized prison cell while a six-year-old tried not to burst into tears on your couch was pretty high on that list.
The smartgun operator wasn't in the least interested in helping Newt for compassionate reasons, but on a subconscious level she knew that the girl was a survivor, and Vasquez respected that... not to mention the little fact that she happened to owe Newt her life. Besides, it would irritate the shit out of Russell.
"Alright," she said abruptly.
Newt glanced up. "W-what?"
"I said alright." Vasquez glanced away to the side, then back at Newt. "You want to stay, you can stay."
"You promise?"
"Yeah, whatever," Vasquez said dismissively, who never promised anything unless there were at least three backup clauses and two witnesses.
The expression of numb relief on Newt's face had next to no effect except to make Vasquez wonder just what the hell was going on.
"Thanks. Thanks so much. I...I really..."
Vasquez held up a curt hand. "Stop right there before you embarrass yourself and let's get one or two things straight. I'm not here to play happy families with you, kid. You can squat here until Hicks shows up and hopefully gets both of us out of here. There's a spare room in there you can use and you can share what's in the kitchen so long as you don't go ape shit. Other than that, stay out of my way. Alright?"
Newt nodded, already half asleep. Vasquez wasn't sure if she'd even heard. Well. If she had problems, the smartgun operator would be only too happy to refresh her memory. She started towards her room, then paused.
"And another thing-" she began, but Newt was already asleep, huddled on the sofa and seemingly dead to the world.
Vasquez glanced down at her, then walked slightly jerkily into the spare room, pulled a couple of blankets off the bed and returned to the living room, deposited the blankets unceremoniously on top of Newt, turned on her heel and walked briskly into her own room before Newt - who had jerked awake - had registered the act and had time to thank her.
Why the hell did I bother with that? Vasquez wondered, inwardly furious with herself. She wouldn't freeze.
No, another voice inside her whispered, but she might catch a cold, and then you'd wind up playing nursemaid. Vasquez nodded slightly in the darkness. Yes. That was it. That was the reason. It had nothing to do with her going soft on the kid at all. Not that she was, of course, even if it might look like that.
The smartgun operator groaned inwardly and really, really hoped that the securcams hadn't been fixed in time for anyone to watch her little slip.
The small bar was remarkable for many reasons. Painted an eye-smarting shade of magenta, it was the only building of its kind along the popular forest trek and consequently did a roaring trade. The trail was always a lot further than most people thought and after at least three days sleeping rough with the insects and forest scorpions, most were only too happy to pay for a meal there.
Tirand was a camper's paradise. There were no cities as such; just scattered hamlets here and there, and one town with a single-screen cinema. It meant you had to wait about eighteen months to get the newest movies, but it also meant you had a basically pollutant-free lifestyle, free from the trappings of civilisation.
At least, until you stepped into the bar, which not only had three TV screens and a radio/stereo system but six computers in a back room, all with internet access. It was really amazing how little time people could go without checking emails at least once...or in the case of a certain comtech, playing
Quake Arena online.
Hudson didn't know what had happened to the others; they'd lost touch after returning from Acheron, and it hadn't been until he'd overheard a conversation between three campers about the guy who'd jump-started their dropship that he'd managed to track Hicks down.
Although he wouldn't really admit it, Hudson was seriously looking forward to seeing him again. Dietrich was interesting to be with but her company got seriously wearing after the first week or so. They weren't actually an item, but Hudson had yet to find a better business partner than Dietrich. Before Acheron, Frost had once remarked that Dietrich probably had a bright future in front of her as a lawyer or secretary. He'd had to run quite fast after saying it but, Hudson thought while languidly polishing a glass, it was pretty appropriate.
He looked around at that evening's group of customers. That was one reason he and Dietrich had picked this spot; you got more people coming by from all places and walks of life than at a colony emigration fair. There were a few regulars, although not many. The bar was too far off the beaten track for most people to trek over there on a daily basis; the food wasn't that good. Most of its clientele (and there were plenty) were hikers or nature-lovers, looking for somewhere to stay before continuing with their trek up the mountain.
Hudson had done it once, just to see what all the fuss was about. Even though he still kept himself in excellent shape, it had taken him eighteen hours just to get there.
He'd worked it out. People who are just starting on a trek don't usually spend nights in beds; they see it as too soft. But once they're getting towards the end, after three days' hard hiking and camping, most of them at least wanted a decent meal...and, Hudson thought with a grin, Dietrich's trick of leaving the kitchen windows open and using fans to waft the smell outside didn't hurt either. Not to mention there were usually some people who got injured in some way or another, and since there were next to no medical facilities for two hundred kilometres all around, Dietrich made a pretty good living out of being the only medtech.
Right now the medtech in question was sat down with her feet propped on a spare bar stool, idly filing her nails and enjoying a free ten minutes.
"You're sure he said today, right?" she said.
"I'm sure," Hudson said automatically.
"What time?"
The comtech closed his eyes slowly, as if the action was physically painful, then without opening them said, "That is the fourteenth time in as many minutes you've asked me that question, Cyn, and for the fourteenth time I'm telling you; I don't fucking know!"
Dietrich rolled her eyes and didn't answer. The heat was making her more irritable than usual; they were due for a storm any time now.
The door clicked open softly. People glanced around to see who it was, then went back to their respective drinks.
Behind Hudson, a voice said steadily, "So this is where you've been hiding all this time."
Hudson froze in mid-motion, a slow grin seeping across his face.
"Dwayne?" he said.
"The same."
Hudson turned, the grin now threatening to split his face in two.
"You found this place, then?"
"A bright pink roof in a green forest?" Hicks shook his head. "Those camouflage exercises just bounced right off you, didn't they, Will?"
"We get most of our customers that way," Dietrich said casually.
"Hey, a place like this, we don't want to hide it." Hudson looked at the glass in his hand, decided it was clean enough and dumped it on a shelf. "So. What can I get you?"
"Something strong," Hicks said tonelessly. "And alcoholic."
"Good choice." Hudson ducked under the bar before emerging with a white bottle, pouring a kind of rose coloured wine into a shot glass.
"What's that?"
"Local firewater. Fair warning though; the stuff's got a kick like a fucking mule." Hudson paused. "You want anything to eat?" he added. "We got a delivery due in soon but we can still get you pretty much anything."
Hicks blinked.
"You two are cooking?"
Dietrich snorted.
"As if! Nah, it's done by a kind of android-computer hybrid. Pretty bog-standard apparently."
Hicks raised his eyebrows.
"And this is your idea of
home-cooked meals?" He nodded back towards the sign outside.
"Yeah? So?" Hudson said. "It doesn't say human-cooked meals."
Hicks shook his head, amused in spite of himself.
"You could've tried it."
Dietrich's eyebrows shot up.
"Oh, leave it out, Dwayne, we wanted to be in with at least half a chance of making this a success! Don't you remember what happened last time Will tried to cook?"
"Hey man, there ain't nothing in the known universe can equal my culinary skills," Hudson protested.
"I'm damn sure there isn't," Dietrich said acerbically. "I'm only too glad I don't have to experience them."
"Ha. Fucking. Ha," Hudson informed her haughtily, then turned back to Hicks. "So how are the others? Have you seen 'em?"
Hicks forced a smile onto his face.
"Good enough, I guess. Spunkmeyer's currently enjoying life as possibly the only retired seventeen-year-old who's claiming a pension from the Corps. I don't really know about Apone; I think he's working as a fitness instructor."
Hudson gawped at him for a few minutes, then howled with laughter.
"Oh man, I feel sorry for the poor suckers who get the sarge as a personal trainer."
"Yeah." Hicks tried vainly to laugh along, but gave it up as a bad job after a couple of seconds.
"Hey man, what's up?" Hudson said.
Hicks hesitated, then took a deep breath.
"Newt's gone."
Hudson and Dietrich exchanged looks.
"Gone as in...?" Hudson prompted, as delicately as he could.
"As in vanished, alright!?" Hicks looked at the drink as if he wasn't sure how it had got there, then tossed it back in one gulp.
The other two exchanged another look. Ripley's death had hit Hicks and Newt probably harder than any of the others, and the two of them had formed a bond. There had been no doubt at all about who Newt would end up staying with.
"Oh man, I'm sorry," Hudson said at last.
Dietrich glanced from one to the other, frowning slightly.
"She didn't run away or anyth-OW! Jesus, Will, that hurt!"
"Then keep your fucking mouth shut until you can at least say something helpful!" Hudson shot back. Dietrich wasn't spiteful as such, but she had a tactlessness that was occasionally refreshing, but mostly just annoying.
Glancing around, more to avoid having to see the haggard expression on Hicks' face, the comtech caught sight of about the only permanent regular the place ever attracted.
Hudson had given up trying to find out about Ruin. She didn't cause trouble, she always paid and she also functioned as a kind of freelance security guard. Ruin liked to be left in peace while eating or drinking, and that included people not starting fights around her. The few who had tried had had nine kinds of shit kicked out of them and been thrown out so fast that Hudson hadn't even had time to get around the other side of the bar.
The comtech smirked slightly, remembering. He'd spoken to her about that, said that if she ever did it again he'd have to kick her out and could she try and behave like a pacifist in future? And speaking of futures, he wasn't saying this, but if she could come back every evening he'd do his best to send her a free drink, only don't tell Dietrich or she'd do her nut. He wasn't entirely sure if she kept coming back because of the free drinks or because she actually liked the place, and he hadn't quite plucked up the courage to ask yet. He did know that she usually pointed lost travellers in his direction though; one time when she'd vanished for a couple of weeks, the number of customers in the bar had dropped by a third.
"What are you-" Dietrich began, then shook her head. "Forget it, Will!"
Hicks glanced at her.
"What?" He followed the comtech's gaze. "Who's that?"
Dietrich rolled her eyes and lowered her voice.
"Your guess is as good as ours. She calls herself Ruin for some reason, just shows up and sits there making one drink last for hours."
"She also makes sure most people who come this way spend money in here," Hudson pointed out with no real severity. Hicks recognised the litany of a well-worn argument about to get started and cleared his throat pointedly.
"What's she got to do with this?"
"Hey man, there's nothing she don't know about," Hudson protested. Hicks met his gaze squarely.
"Nothing?" he said quietly, glancing pointedly at the wrapping Hudson still insisted on wearing to hide the acid scars on his arm.
"She sees and talks to just about everyone who comes in here," the comtech said, although he dropped his gaze. "Might be worth an ask. I mean, what've you got to lose?"
Hicks glanced over at Ruin again. She was attractive in a kind of masculine way, a little like a finer built version of Vasquez. Even on the other side of the room, there was a self-assurance about her that was like a cat, as though she'd come through the worst life had to throw at her and was still alive.
How little you know, Hicks thought grimly.
"Why should she help me?" he said.
"Dunno," Hudson answered, not very helpfully. "But like I said, what've you got to lose?"
Hicks glanced from him to Dietrich and back to the comtech again, and gave in.
"Alright. Fine. But at least give me another drink."
"Coming right up."
Hicks groaned aloud.
"How long have you been waiting to use that line?"
Hudson rolled his eyes as he refilled Hicks' glass.
"Just go! She doesn't bite. And here-" he grabbed a carton of fruit juice from under the bar "-take that with you; she's almost finished her drink and then you'll never catch her."
"Will-" Dietrich began resignedly.
"Cyn, if you're gonna quibble over a fucking drink at a time like this, you can save it!" Hudson cut across sharply.
"It's not that; it's just that's the last carton we have, and deliveries aren't due for another week. What d'you think she's gonna do without her free drink?" Dietrich added, rather sourly.
"We can worry about that when it happens."
"It just
did!"
"Should I take the goddamned drink or not?" Hicks said irritably.
"Yeah." Hudson shoved it into the older man's hand. "It's about the only way you'll get her to listen to you."
It wasn't until he was halfway across the room that the absurdity of what he was doing hit him; he was going to ask a perfect stranger for help finding a six-year-old girl and offer her a carton of juice as a...what? Peace offering? Bribe? He was still trying to puzzle that one out when he reached the table.
"You took your time coming over," Ruin said calmly, before Hicks had a chance to speak. "What do you want?"
Hicks hesitated, momentarily thrown.
"Is this seat taken?" he said. Ruin shrugged.
"Does it look taken? I don't think the people I'm waiting for are going to turn up tonight if that's what you're asking me, so go ahead and sit if you want to."
Hicks considered for a few minutes, then thought
what the hell, and settled down on the chair opposite.
"I was told you could help me," he said quietly.
"By Will."
It wasn't a question. Hicks nodded.
"Yeah. Me, I'll believe it when I see it."
Ruin smiled slightly.
"Nothing like being honest, is there, Hicks?"
"No, I-how did you know my name?"
"I heard you and Will talking. What do you want?"
Hicks eyed her quietly.
"You don't know?"
"I was going to give you a chance to tell me I'm wrong." Ruin leaned back, an enigmatic gleam in her eyes. "You want to know if I've seen your kid."
Hicks started to say that Newt wasn't technically his, then thought better of it. No need to complicate matters.
"Yeah," he said instead.
"Even though you realise that trying to find one kid in all the populated worlds is like trying to find a grain of blue sand in the Sahara?"
Hicks grimaced.
"Thanks. Now I feel
really optimistic."
"I just wanted to bring you back down to earth."
"Yeah, well, you've succeeded. I'm so far down I think I just hit magma. Can you do something or can't you?"
Ruin stretched leisurely.
"I don't know yet. But I'm interested enough to listen. So. Tell me more."
A few million miles away, Vasquez jerked awake, sweat sticking the sheets to her, one hand automatically pressed over her mouth to smother the scream.
Damn.It was a strange thing to think upon awakening, and one she was at a loss to explain, but the feeling still remained that she'd been on the verge of something...there was something she'd missed somewhere. She tried to remember, then gave it up. It was like trying to remember a dream...although she didn't seem to be having much difficulty on
that score since Acheron.
The smartgun operator glanced over at the small bedside table. The alarm clock sat there, its glowing numbers telling anyone who might be interested that the time was five thirty four a.m. Vasquez grimaced. Well, she might as well get up now as half an hour later. Even though she didn't seem to be officially in the USCM any more, the smartgun operator still kept to the same timetable. It was a fragile sense of security (and one that most non-Marines would probably class as borderline masochistic) but even a slender lifeline was better than none.
Taking a deep breath to try and calm her still racing heart, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat for a few minutes, running her hand through her hair with another grimace and wishing she had a set of clippers. Long enough to run her fingers through was too long, as far as she was concerned.
"Vasquez?" Newt stood in the doorway, blinking owlishly. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Vasquez said harshly, keeping her back to the girl. "Why shouldn't I be?"
"You sounded like you were having a bad dream. Were you?"
"No," Vasquez lied curtly. "Go back to sleep."
Newt looked at her for a few minutes, puzzled, then shrugged and did so.
Vasquez waited for a few minutes, making sure the kid really had gone, then walked through into the bathroom and turned the shower on full. A jet of water so powerful it was like an all-over body massage exploded out of the shower head and drenched her in under two seconds. She had to admit, the shower unit alone was almost worth the aggravation of being here.
It was another twenty minutes before she finally stepped out and towelled off, thoroughly awake but in a foul mood. That seemed to be happening even more than usual these days, and the new knowledge that she was detained at the Company's pleasure and also serving as some kind of surrogate mother to a six-year-old kid did nothing to improve her temper.
And speaking of which...She finished getting dressed and entered the living room. Newt lay where Vasquez had left her, eyes shut a little too tightly for it to be real. Well. Let the kid pretend, if it gave her any satisfaction. At least this way Vasquez got a little more peace (and indirectly, so did Newt).
The smartgun operator opened the front door and stepped out. She hadn't been lying when she'd told Russell the corridor served as a track; she'd been using it as such ever since she'd first arrived. There was only so much stress you could burn off with weights, after all, Vasquez thought as she started off, settling into her stride almost instantly.
She hadn't gone more than a few hundred metres before she was aware of people following. They didn't sound heavy enough for security guards and besides, she was going slowly enough for any hired thugs to have caught up to her if they'd wanted to. Most probably it was just some other people out for a run.
A somewhat enigmatic gleam crept into the smartgun operator's dark eyes.
You want to run? she thought.
Let's run.Gradually, too gradually to be immediately noticeable, she picked up the pace until she was almost going flat out and had the immense satisfaction of hearing the others fall back, until there was only one left, one who continued to stay a few paces behind her as Vasquez completed the first circuit, drawing level with her place again, and then abruptly slammed on the brakes and turned.
"What?" she said irritably. "This place isn't big enough for you to exercise in private so you have to come and bug me?"
"I..." Her pursuer, a woman of about thirty with greasy black hair and a slight weight problem, bent over, coughing loudly.
"Are you alright?" Vasquez said, after about thirty seconds had gone past with no change. She really didn't want to get stuck with a dead body on her hands; life was already complicated enough.
The woman waved a hand in a gesture clearly meant to convey,
yes, I'm fine, and after another ten seconds managed to straighten up.
"Yeah...'m okay...jus' get a little shorta breath sometimes." She pulled a packet of cigarettes from her pocket, drew one and lit it.
"Those things don't help," Vasquez said tersely. The woman waved a hand expressively, spilling ash all over the place and the smartgun operator drew back, not bothering to hide the disgust that flickered across her face.
"Yeah, I know, but..." She inhaled deeply and then started to really cough, a harsh, racking sound that made Vasquez' teeth itch. "'Scuse me," the stranger added as soon as she had control over her breathing again.
Strangely enough, Vasquez did, largely because she was wondering how the hell a chain smoker with an obviously pretty fucked-up set of lungs had managed to keep pace with her when the others had dropped out long ago.
"Name's Charmaine Ashton. Friends call me Char." Charmaine held out a hand that was yellow with nicotine. Vasquez simply looked at it and the older woman dropped it again, clearly unembarrassed. "I was in the crowd yesterday. I saw what you did to them guards. Well, we all did; it was all over the corridor in a few minutes. A few mates and me drew lots to see who was gonna speak to you."
"And you won," Vasquez said laconically.
"Nope; I lost."
Vasquez looked at her then,
really looked at her and felt a grin threaten to spread itself across her face, a grin that was only suppressed by the equally strong urge not to get any more involved with people here than she had to.
"And...why did you want to speak to me?" she said, in an effort to cover up her momentary lapse.
"Well, you're pretty hot stuff," Charmaine said, scratching her chin with one finger, then caught sight of the expression on Vasquez' face and suddenly realised that the smartgun operator might take this the wrong way. "No, I didn't mean like that! I meant you're new around here. You might've noticed; this place ain't exactly a popular address. We don't get many new people, and we
especially don't get many new people who bash the shit out of McDermott's goons."
Vasquez permitted herself a satisfied expression.
"Y'know," Charmaine went on conspiratorially, "I was wondering if I could talk to you. Privately, I mean."
Vasquez hesitated, then thought what the hell. Charmaine might be able to help her shed some light on what was going on, and besides, it wasn't like she had anything better to do.
"This way."
She pushed the front door open and stepped in, mentally adding
no door locks to her list of things to worry about. She didn't like the idea that anyone who took a fancy to her place could just walk right in.
"Do you want something? Coffee? Juice? Water?"
"Coffee'd be good. I was up at five am this morning; I need a pick-me-up." As Vasquez went into the kitchen, Charmaine glanced around, interested, then her gaze fell on Newt and she blinked.
"I didn't know you had a daughter."
"What?" Vasquez said, stunned not so much by the comment as by the assumption that the blond, fair-skinned child still asleep on the couch could possibly be hers.
"What's her name?"
"Newt," Vasquez said without thinking. Charmaine's eyebrows shot up and she started coughing again.
"Sorry...
newt? As in slimy lizard?"
"As in...yes. It's a nickname."
Charmaine eyed her shrewdly, accepting her mug of coffee with a
thankyou.
"This wouldn't be the same girl who broke all records by getting suspended on the first day of term, would it?"
"Huh?" Vasquez stared. "What are you talking about?"
Charmaine laughed, a wheezing sound that quickly degenerated into another spasm of coughing.
"I had two boys in the same class, before the fucking Company moved us here."
Vasquez felt herself warming to this woman ever so slightly. Anyone who hated the Company couldn't be all bad.
"One of 'em said this new girl showed up one morning. She'd been put into the nearest Weyland-Yutani Care Home."
Vasquez snorted. She'd narrowly escaped a similar fate when she was younger, and felt that Newt would probably have been better off staying on Acheron.
"She'd been severely traumatised by something or other. The Company say they rescued her from a ship with a Marine on board, but that was it. Anyway, the people in charge practically had to drag her into the classroom - she was thrashing around and screaming - and then she suddenly seemed to calm down. During recess she vanished. Ben saw her climbing into an air vent. Of course, the instructor couldn't fit after her."
"Yeah, that sounds very much her style," Vasquez said wryly, glancing over at the sleeping form with a flash of something that might almost be called pride. Newt was an annoyance, but there was no denying that the kid had guts. "This Ben told the instructor?" she said suddenly.
Charmaine drew herself up, suddenly the very epitome of outrage.
"My Ben, a grass? You watch your mouth, miss! I brought him up properly, I'll have you know, brought him up to know right from wrong and he knows better than to squeal! It was some other kid."
"Right." Vasquez looked away, fighting a sudden urge to grin. "Sorry." She glanced back at Charmaine. "So why'd the Company move you?"
Charmaine took another drag on her cigarette.
"No idea. Well, actually, I have, but I don't think that was it. I, er, accidentally came across some pretty high security labs. Never saw what was in 'em, and couldn't find anything on the files either...not that I'd hack into 'em, of course..."
"Of course," Vasquez agreed, face deadpan.
"Though I found something weird, something about genetic experiments. I only got a short look before my terminal crashed and five minutes later, me and my boys were moved here without so much as a by-your-leave." Charmaine grinned, exposing yellowing teeth. "Kicked one of 'em good in the nadgers, though! He'll think twice before trying to cop a feel again."
"I'm sure," Vasquez said with unusual diplomacy, privately amazed that the older woman's appearance hadn't been enough to put anyone off, though there was something...
fascinating about Charmaine. You found yourself embroiled in a conversation with her for no better reason than to see what she was going to come out with next.
There was a loud knock on the door, followed by two emphatic rings on the buzzer. Vasquez glanced at Charmaine.
"If you've-" she began sharply. The older woman held up her hands.
"Nothing to do with me, mate; swear on me gran's life. Or I would if she weren't already dead."
"Then who..." Vasquez began, then broke off as the visitor banged on the door again. "Alright, I'm coming!"
She stalked over to the door, swearing fluently and alternately in both English and Spanish before yanking it open so hard that the man who had been crouched with his ear pressed against it spilled onto the floor.
There was an awkward silence, then McDermott got to his feet.
"May I come in?"
"You're in already, ain't you?" Vasquez shrugged. "Still, my place is yours. Literally, I imagine. What do you want?"
McDermott stepped fully inside, nodded coolly to Charmaine and favoured Newt - who had been woken up by his somewhat rude entrance - with what he obviously imagined to be a friendly, paternal smile and which made him look instead as though someone had dropped an ice cube down his back and caused Vasquez to suppress a sudden urge to step between them.
Newt didn't return the smile.
Smart kid, Vasquez thought wryly,
she knows when she's being put on. Then again, Newt wasn't a typical six-year-old.
No longer smiling, McDermott returned his attention to the smartgun operator.
"You appear to have a talent for trouble," he said bluntly.
"That's nice," Vasquez said. "No
good morning, no
how are you?" She snorted. "Well, I suppose it would be too much to expect you to have learned manners since we last spoke."
"Mr Russell is very distressed about what's happened."
"
He's distressed?" Vasquez said incredulously. "I have somehow been transported from Acheron to here, locked up, spied on and assaulted and you're telling me he's distressed?"
"You did not have to behave in such a belligerent manner towards him."
"No, you're right. I didn't. But hey, it was fun."
"I was referring to your, shall we say, new housemate?"
Vasquez blinked.
"The kid?"
"The...
kid, yes. You are aware that she went missing from an approved care home two nights ago?"
"No."
"Ah." McDermott looked supremely satisfied.
"But I am now," Vasquez added. "Was that all?"
The man's face dropped like a lead balloon.
"Well...I had hoped...the people in charge were hoping for her return. They've been very worried about her."
"Then why didn't they come themselves?"
"This area is off-limits to most people without the correct authority. Even Mr Russell wouldn't be permitted to enter."
"Well, thank Christ for small favours," Vasquez muttered, not quite under her breath. "So how come
you are?"
"I work in a different department. Then again, Mr Russell is a stand-in only; the man usually doing his job is currently on leave." McDermott made to sit down on the couch but, as if she hadn't seen him, Vasquez casually swung her legs up, stretching out to fill the whole space. The man stiffened.
"If you
persist in acting so childishly, I will be forced to-"
"I'm sorry," Vasquez cut in, acidly sweet, "did you want to sit down? Only I can't remember offering you a seat and you didn't ask for one."
"This false bravado is doing you no favours."
"Who said it was false?" Faster than McDermott could follow, the smartgun operator was on her feet and in his face, no longer smiling. "Let me tell you something; I've dealt on a regular basis with people who would chew you up and spit you out, and I've gone in against things you couldn't imagine in your worst nightmares and come out again pretty much in one piece. After all I've seen and done, you don't impress me much."
"I don't care about impressing anyone," McDermott said coldly, not flinching. "I am here to request the child be given back into our care. Any attempt to refuse would be treated most severely."
Vasquez snorted derisively.
"What're you gonna do, take away my TV privileges?"
"If you persist in this awkwardness, I can guarantee you will find yourself in a vast amount of trouble."
"News flash; you have locked me up, officially killed me and branded me a liar. How much more trouble is there?" Vasquez shook her head. "You want to talk? Come back when you can do it without resorting to cheap, melodramatic threats."
"I have reason to believe the child in question is in dire need of psychological analysis, based on her wild and antisocial behaviour. This is no idle comment either; I have personal experience of her actions."
Vasquez turned to Newt with raised eyebrows.
"Let me guess; you bit him."
Newt squirmed under the woman's piercing stare.
"Only a coupla times."
"Really? Why'd you stop there?" Vasquez said bluntly.
It was clear on McDermott's face that he wasn't sure exactly where he'd lost control of this conversation, and he made a valiant effort to regain it.
"Your seeming approval of such unruly behaviour is the main reason why you cannot be considered a legal guardian for this child."
Vasquez' coffee sprayed across the room.
"
What?" she and Newt said simultaneously. It was hard to say who looked more scandalised.
Vasquez continued. "Hey, I'm not interested in making this permanent! Far as I'm concerned, she's just squatting with me until Hicks shows up to claim her."
"Corporal Hicks was killed in a freak accident three days ago."
Newt gasped, the blood draining from her face. Vasquez didn't even look over at her.
"Liar," she said. It wasn't accusatory or even particularly angry; it was a simple statement of fact delivered in a calm tone that was somehow worse than if she'd screamed it.
"Ms Vasquez, if you-"
"Shit," Vasquez interrupted, "anyone who comes in here and accuses me of kidnapping after locking me up in a top-security penthouse without giving me any explanations might as well go right ahead and call me Vaz. Russell said yesterday he was looking for Hicks and wanted him brought in for questioning. Unless he was planning to bring in a medium, he wouldn't have bothered with that if the guy was dead."
McDermott sighed wearily.
"You are making this far harder than it needs to be, Ms Vasquez. If you persist in this stupidity, I will be forced to bring in security guards next time."
Vasquez raised cynical eyebrows.
"Why? I haven't attacked you...yet," she couldn't resist adding.
"Respect? I have nothing
but the utmost respect for you-"
"Me?" Vasquez interrupted. "Or my ability to knock your teeth so far down your fucking neck you'll be able to give yourself a blowjob?"
McDermott got to his feet with an air of finality.
"From what I've heard, you'd be the expert on such things, wouldn't you?"
If he expected the smartgun operator to be upset by his taunt, he was sadly disappointed. Vasquez merely smirked.
"What? Sorry man, you're about six years too late."
"I'm putting you under house arrest."
"And this is going to make a difference to me...how?"
"You know what's involved. You may not leave the house under any circumstances, barring emergency evacuation. Once I see you're willing to behave in a more civilised and mature fashion, maybe we'll be prepared to treat you like an adult."
Vasquez snorted.
"I'm not holding my breath." She sat back down again, watching the TV, feigning interest in the game show there. "Front door's over there. Don't let it hit you on the way out." She shrugged. "Or do; I'm not picky. Either way, I won't have to listen to any more of your bitching; you whine more than Hudson, and that's saying something."
The man glared at her, a glare that had about as much effect on Vasquez as a single snowflake on a polar bear. Then... It should theoretically be impossible to stomp away in a dignified manner, but McDermott somehow managed it.
"You shouldn't've done that," Charmaine said. "You'll pay for it later; he'll make sure of it."
"I hope so," Vasquez said bitingly. "I feel like a fucking mushroom right about now; I'm currently living in the dark and getting shit thrown on me at regular intervals."
"Vasquez?" Newt said curiously.
"What?"
"What's a blowjob?"
Vasquez opened her mouth, then closed it again after a few seconds. Charmaine sniggered.
"Yeah, go on, Vasquez, explain."
Vasquez shot Charmaine a
you're-not-helping! look and cast about rapidly for something to say.
"It's. Well, it's. Uh. See, when two people get together and. Um. It's sort of..."
"Adult stuff?"
"Yes." Vasquez grasped the out with both hands and more than a little relief. "It's, uh,
adult stuff."
Charmaine snickered quietly.
"Alright." Vasquez took a gulp of coffee and almost immediately felt a little more human. "What the fuck's going on here?"
"...I dunno how't happened."
It was half past one in the morning, and Hicks was rapidly sliding towards the pissed side of tipsy. Ruin watched him. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking, but her expression suggested languid amusement.
The four of them were alone, the last of the punters having left just after eleven. Hudson, who knew Ruin better than the others, (not that that was saying much) also knew that she was less than happy about this arrangement, although she was hiding it well. Conspicuousness wasn't her style; she was happiest when she could lurk in the shadows.
"I jus'..." Hicks waved his glass expressively, sloshing his drink everywhere, "I jus'-oops-I jus', jus' fell 'sleep and, and whenIwokupshewasgone."
Hudson deftly fielded the glass as it swooped past him for the third time.
"Hey man, don't you think you've had enough to drink?"
Hicks, who seemed vaguely puzzled by his suddenly empty hand, attempted to draw himself up.
"Pri'ate Husson, y're 'dressing a, a, a seniorrankincorpral!"
"You're fucking plastered, Dwayne," Hudson said, not unsympathetically. "Get upstairs and sleep it off. You'll feel better in the morning."
"Yeah, once the hangover wears off," Dietrich muttered, not quite under her breath.
Hicks favoured her with a slightly bleary glare.
"For y'r i'f'mashun, 'm no' as think as you pissed I am."
"Yeah man, okay, whatever you say." Hudson hoisted the older man to his feet, half supporting, half carrying him over to the stairs.
Ruin watched them go, a strange expression on her face. Dietrich had caught her looking like it before, when she'd found a tube of foundation that the medtech had dropped.
That had been in the early days. Dietrich didn't bother with makeup now; she was attractive enough not to need it and besides, she'd rapidly found out that in hot temperatures and climates such as Tirand's, makeup equalled insect magnet. But she'd never quite forgotten Ruin's expression; it was like fascination mixed with caution. Like seeing a strange animal for the first time and not sure whether it was hostile or not.
Seemingly aware of the medtech's attention, Ruin got to her feet, moving with liquid grace, and crossed over to the kitchen, opening the fridge and taking out a box of eggs that were at least three weeks past their sell-by date.
"Mind if I have these?"
"Rotten eggs?" Dietrich shrugged. She'd long given up trying to fathom the way Ruin's mind worked, and secretly suspected that it didn't really work at all, or at least not like anyone else's. "You want rotten eggs, you take 'em. Just don't break 'em in here."
"Thanks." Ruin took the egg box, being careful not to damage the contents, and slipped out.
Dietrich shook her head. That was the thing about Ruin; she never walked normally but always skirted around the furniture, as though there was a pit in the middle of the room. One day she'd get to the bottom of that girl's mentality.
From the top of the stairs, she could dimly hear Hicks' strident voice protesting that he wasn't drunk, he never got drunk, he was impervious to drunkenness (and it took him three attempts to pronounce the word 'impervious' coherently) and if Hudson would go and get him another drink, he'd be more than happy to prove it.
The closing door cut him off mid-protest and Hudson came back downstairs.
"Man, it's hit him hard."
"Not surprised," Dietrich answered tartly. "That stuff's almost pure alcohol."
Hudson looked at her slightly askance.
"I was talking about Newt's disappearance, Cyn."
Dietrich snorted.
"Oh c'mon Will; so she's gone off in a hissy fit or something! She'll turn up sooner or later."
"'Hissy fit'?" Hudson echoed. "She's been with Dwayne ever since we got back and he was on that ship of his when she vanished. I'll agree that the kid's something special, but I doubt even she could pilot an escape capsule, and if she was hiding on the ship, Dwayne would've found her easily!"
"Whatever." Dietrich yawned. "Think I'll hit the sack; I'm exhausted."
Hudson looked at her incredulously.
"What, are you seriously telling me that you can do a twenty mile hike complete with pack and weapons on top of an assault course and log race, but sitting around filing your nails and making smart remarks is too much for you?"
Dietrich grimaced. Well, when you put it like that...
"Cyn?" Hudson said suddenly.
"Yeah?"
"I know we agreed never to talk about it..." the comtech began.
"Talk about what?" Dietrich said, in sub-arctic tones.
Hudson shook his head.
"I've gotta know. How the fuck did you and the sarge get back to Operations?" He shook his head again. "I saw your signs in the APC. You were almost dead, you weren't moving, then eight hours later you miraculously turn up."
"You're right, Hudson," Dietrich answered coldly. The comtech was beginning to see a definite pattern emerging here; being called Will was good, being called Hudson was not. "We did agree never to talk about it. Good night."
Hudson watched as she stalked up the stairs to her room and slammed the door so hard that the glasses still left out on the tables vibrated. He smirked slightly; he'd known that one would irk the medtech.
The smirk vanished as he surveyed the array of dirty plates and glasses yet to be cleaned and he sighed.
Note to self, Will; next time you decide to piss Cyn off, remember to wait until after she's done her share of the washing up.
With another sigh he crossed to the nearest table. Hanging around wouldn't clean the place up any faster, and he should be able to get this done in time for a good few hours' sleep.
"You're not going out, are you?" Newt said, slightly apprehensively.
Vasquez turned to fix her with a cold stare. Charmaine had refused to answer any questions right there and, instead, had told the smartgun operator that if she came to the older woman's own apartment at seven that evening, she'd hear all she wanted to know. Vasquez had debated with herself all day whether it was worth it, then - on the third time of Newt asking her what was for dinner - had decided that it couldn't be worse than there.
"I was planning to, yeah. If that's alright with you, of course," she added, heavy sarcasm dripping on every word.
Newt dropped her gaze and didn't answer.
"I mean, if it's not," Vasquez continued implacably, "please, feel free to say so. If you have a problem with me leaving my apartment, go right ahead and share it."
Newt bit her lip.
"'S jus'..."
"Yes?" Vasquez said, a little too politely.
"Well, didn't that man say you were under house arrest?"
"So what?" Vasquez was already opening the door.
"So...doesn't that mean you're not allowed to leave here? 'Cause if it does'n'you get caught, what's gonna happen to me?"
"Hmm." Vasquez pretended to consider. "Don't know, don't care, how's that sound?"
"You'd care if it was you they were gonna throw back into some care home!" Newt blurted, and then abruptly shut her mouth.
The smartgun operator - who had frozen rigid at Newt's words - hesitated, wondering how best to proceed. The kid had a point; Vasquez had met people who had risked life on the streets rather than in one of those places. She ran various options through her mind and decided, against her own nature, that patience might work.
Closing the door again, Vasquez crossed over to stand in front of Newt, who looked up at her with a growing feeling of trepidation.
The smartgun operator waited until she was sure she had the girl's full attention before cupping her dog tags in one hand.
"Do you know what this means?"
A nod.
"Uh huh. You're a soldier."
"Do you know what that means?"
Newt shook her head.
"It means until the USCM summon me to an official court martial and kick me out, I'm still only under the command of the Corps, and the Corps does not take its orders from civilians, particularly not the ones in the likes of Weyland-fucking-Yutani."
Newt risked looking up at her.
"But...if they said you're dead, why would they help you?"
Vasquez shrugged.
"They wouldn't. But that doesn't matter. I'm still a Marine until the USCM - and only the USCM - decide otherwise."
Newt now met her gaze squarely.
"Uh huh. And if someone blows your head off, who's gonna tell the USCM? 'Cause if you're already dead, these guys can kill you when they like, right?"
"Say what you like, kid, I'm going."
"Are you gonna come back?"
Vasquez gritted her teeth.
"No. No, I thought I'd just pop out and have dinner in a five star restaurant, then marry a multimillionaire and live happily ever after. Of course I'm fucking coming back! You don't think I've got a choice, do you?"
"You don't have to be like that about it," Newt said, with an attempt at dignity.
"You're right. I don't. But you know what? It really, really feels good." Vasquez turned and stalked out, slamming the door behind her.
Newt gazed after her for a few minutes, then shrugged and went back to watching TV. Although she didn't mind admitting that life as Vasquez' verbal punching bag got a little depressing at times, living with the smartgun operator was a lot better than the alternative.
Ruin cracked open gummy eyes, forcing them to focus. It was light enough to see; someone had thoughtfully incinerated a few eggs and that fire was still burning.
Her mind had already told her where she was before waking up. Now all she had to look forward to was impregnation, or death by facehugger, as it was usually referred to.
Well, it had taken the aliens some time to catch her. She supposed that might be considered an achievement.
It had all been Talon's fault. She'd been hungry and ignored the warning signs, heading straight into an ambush. Ruin had managed to get her and Sky towards a hiding place, but something had cracked her on the side of the head and she'd passed out, not coming round until now.
Nesting chamber. The heart of any hive, and one the aliens would do absolutely nothing to endanger. If you had a good weapon and took care to keep out of range of the queen, you could sleep among the eggs and not get attacked. Then again, no one in their right mind would want to sleep in a room full of facehuggers; Ruin supposed that was the main failsafe.
The queen sat (squatted? presided?) over her eggs like a...well, like a queen, really. There was no other word for it. Ruin watched the eggs as well, making a private bet with herself as to which one out of two would crack first. Although eggs could lie dormant for literally centuries, it was pretty easy to tell they were ready to hatch, just by studying the four flaps at the top.
A wet creak from off to her left informed her that not only had she lost the bet, she'd overlooked a candidate as well.
So it finally comes down to this, does it? After all your moves, all the times you've escaped, you're going to die with an exploded chest.
There was a light scratching sound and Ruin fought down the urge to scream. That never solved anything. She wondered if the actual impregnation hurt, if-
Incandescent heat blazed past her suddenly, scorching her face and incinerating the facehugger.
"Move one finger, bitch, and I'll torch your fucking tail!" an all-too-familiar voice said boldly.
Ruin shut her eyes with an inward groan, rolling them behind closed lids. How had an idiot like Talon ever survived this long?
A rescue attempt by that gun-fever victim. Great. I think I preferred the facehugger.
Talon emitted something that was probably supposed to represent a blood-chilling war cry and ended up instead sounding like a car alarm with hiccups. This time Ruin groaned aloud, opening her eyes again just in time to see the queen turn towards her, opening the mouth to reveal the deadly tongue behind.
"So this is where you hang out," it said.
Ruin blinked.
"Uh...what?"
"I mean, I guess it's none of my business," the queen went on casually, "but you don't look very comfortable there."
"It's a hive," Ruin answered, as though she spoke to bugs on a regular basis. "It's not meant to be comfortable."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" the queen said, now sounding perplexed.
"I..." Confused, Ruin opened her eyes, saw Hudson's face above her, let out a yelp and promptly fell off the wall.
"Hey! Hey," Hudson held up his hands, palm out. "It's okay! It's me!"
Already on her feet, Ruin glanced down, seeing the egg box on the ground and remembering. She'd lain down on the wall, hadn't she, for a brief rest and then...she supposed she must have dropped off.
Right. A dream. That's all. You got tired and fell asleep.
She bent down to pick up the box again, and paused. She seemed to tire far more easily these days.
Getting old, a voice inside her whispered. Ruin snorted, dismissing it. She didn't know her exact age, but she wasn't old.
At least...she didn't think she was. Not as old as either Hicks or Hudson, that was for sure.
"Y'know, we do have rooms inside," Hudson said pointedly. Ruin smiled slightly but didn't turn to face him.
"I'm happy for you," she said quietly. She rarely raised her voice. Something about it was unsettling, and Hudson had damn near burst his brains trying to work out what ever since he'd first heard it. The best description he'd been able to come up with so far was dusty, and he wondered suddenly how often she'd used it before arriving. "And those rooms are currently occupied by your friend and campers who couldn't face another night with insects crawling into their sleeping bags, right?"
Hudson shifted.
"Yeah, but...we could..."
"Throw them out? For what? Someone who can't usually afford to pay for anything more than a glass of water?" Ruin shook her head. "Don't be a fool."
Hudson raised his eyebrows.
"And I suppose you can tell me how much we took today?"
"Eighty seven creds. It's not exactly peak season." Ruin quirked an eyebrow. "Still, that should be enough to get that new terminal you want so badly."
Hudson shook his head.
"Okay. Joking aside, how the fuck do you do that?" he said flatly. It wasn't the first time Ruin had surprised him or Dietrich with just how much she knew about them.
"You ought to be a bit more careful what you say," Ruin told him calmly.
Hudson, who had been fooled like this before, stared at her fixedly.
"That's not an answer."
"Yes it is. It's just not the one you want." Ruin stretched leisurely, cat-fashion, then drew one leg up and rested one arm on the bent knee.
"What did you make of him?" Hudson asked suddenly.
"Your friend?" Ruin shrugged. "He misplaced his kid. It happens."
"Can you help him?" Hudson said pointedly. Ruin shrugged again.
"Like I told your buddy, finding one six year old kid is like looking for a grain of blue sand in the Sahara. All I know is that he thinks she was grabbed by the company, and I'm sure you can appreciate that doesn't exactly narrow it down. How many companies are out there, anyway?"
Hudson, who had been occupied in the back room for this little revelation of Hicks', stared.
"Are you sure that's what he said?"
"Positive. Like I said, there's too many companies out there to make this possible. What do you expect me to do, walk into every one in existence and search it? The kid'll be dead of old age before I'm half done and you know it."
Hudson glanced at Ruin without really seeing her.
"It's company as in Company, not company."
There was a reflective pause, then Ruin said seriously, "No, sorry, you've lost me there."
Hudson stared.
"The Company. Weyland-Yutani." Seeing the girl's perplexed look, he went on. "As in, the money and power behind almost all of the colony worlds bar this one and a few others! The ruling body over everything! You don't sneeze on one of their worlds without them knowing about it."
Ruin heard him out politely and then said, "And these people stay in charge because...?"
"Because...well, because..." Hudson floundered for a few minutes. What he wanted to say was, because they have a tendency to buy out anyone who shows signs of starting a rival company and besides, there's nothing we can put in their place that isn't just as corrupt and maligned. Something in him, however, said that this concept would be so alien to Ruin that she would be totally incapable of understanding him, not because she was slow or stupid, but because she was completely and utterly different. Trying to explain things to her would be like him trying to read a book in Chinese or Arabic; so foreign that you were pretty much screwed before you even started, and so instead he said, "Because they're too powerful to move against." It was pretty much true, after all.
"Isn't that what you want me to do, though?" Ruin persisted. "Move against them?"
"We want confirmation," Hudson answered.
"So in other words, you want me to waltz into this omnipotent Company, see if I can find this kid, then turn around and waltz right back out without her and tell you where she is?"
Hudson met her gaze unashamedly.
"Pretty much."
Ruin shook her head.
"I don't do so well in crowds. Why can't your friend go, if he's so eager?"
"Because they know him too well, that's why."
"Oh, so it's alright for me to trot from one end of the galaxy to the other-"
An idea struck Hudson.
"Okay, fine. What about this? The most advanced Company facilities for security and the like are found on Gateway. If they've got her anywhere, it'll probably be there. You go in, you search and you come back here again. If she's there, we'll think about what to do next. If she's not, well, we'll still have to think of something, but at least the most you'll be doing is searching one space station."
"What's a space station?"
Hudson shot her a sharp look, but Ruin's expression was genuine.
"It's...well, it's kinda..." He frowned. "Have you ever been off Tirand?"
"Of course. I wasn't born here, and I didn't grow up here either. I've just never heard of a space station." If she was honest, Ruin had never heard of any kind of station, but given Hudson's reaction, she decided to keep that particular gem to herself. "So-since I can't really fly a ship and since I'm betting you're not going with me to do so either-do you have any idea where I can find a pilot?"
Hudson raised his eyebrows.
"Then you'll do it?"
"I'll search this Gateway place, that's all. If you can find someone who can get me there."
The comtech hesitated.
"Well..."
"Preferably someone I don't have to pay. Blackmailing's alright to a certain extent, but I'm never one hundred percent happy about putting my life in the hands of someone who has a very good reason to want me dead."
"There's one guy who might be able to help you. I dunno where he lives though; I only have his contact number."
"Can he fly a shuttle?"
"Oh yeah."
"He'll do fine, then. What's his number?"
As Hudson wrote it and the name down on a piece of paper, he glanced up at Ruin.
"Fair warning; he swore he'd never pilot another ship for the rest of his life. He probably won't agree to help you, but right now, he's the best I can offer."
Ruin smiled slightly, taking the details off the comtech.
"Leave that to me."
A few hours later, Ruin entered her home. The sleeping chamber looked invitingly comfortable, but she brushed it off; she had more important things to do.
Sitting down in front of one of the surfaces, she slipped the headset lying there over her head, tuned into the frequency and spoke to the person on the other end.
"I want everything you can turn up on Daniel Spunkmeyer, late of the USCM. Family details, living address, everything right down to his educational grades."
There was no answer, but Ruin knew her instructions had gone through.
Swore never to pilot another ship, did he? Well, we'll just see about that.
There had to be something she could use; the ones under her command had never failed her before on that respect.
Ruin sat back, well satisfied.
Vasquez hadn't gone more than ten or twelve yards before being challenged. Although she'd half expected it, she was still caught slightly off-guard when someone from behind her said, "Now, you know you're not supposed to be outside your apartment, don't you?"
It was more the words and tone, rather than the fact they were uttered at all, which gave the smartgun operator pause.
"Excuse me?" Vasquez said, turning. Her eyes met those of a man who looked to be about ten years older than her, and one who was clearly used to taking what he wanted and using his rank to intimidate people.
"You heard me, honey. You're supposed to stay inside, aren't you?" The guard stepped in, leering down at her. "Of course...if you were to return now, I'm sure it would be, shall we say, overlooked?"
Vasquez raised her eyebrows.
"What are you saying? That if I don't crawl back to my room like a good little girl you'll tell tales on me?"
"I don't think that'll be necessary." The guard pulled out a stun unit, a more lethal version of the ones that McDermott's goons had carried. "One zap from this, sweetheart, and you'll be in spasm on the ground, probably pissing yourself most like. It takes a lot of people that way."
Vasquez shifted her weight ever so slightly.
"And...since I'm a Marine and you're just some hired muscle, what makes you think you could beat me in a fight?"
The guard smirked.
"Ah, well, our commander already thought of that, see? Great idea. Probably why he's the boss and all." He pulled his sleeve up, revealing what looked like a microchip embedded in his skin, allowing the smartgun operator a good look before covering it up again. "See, that's a remote grenade that's keyed directly into my biorhythm. If the signal stops, there're two fragmentation grenades on my person that'll go off."
Vasquez considered.
"So what you're saying is that you can kill me, but I can't kill you?"
The smirk widened.
"Right."
Vasquez nodded slightly.
"Right."
She stepped forward, snapping one foot up in a kick into the man's groin, causing him to double over, knock-kneed, then as his torso went past her, kicked out again and had the immense satisfaction of hearing ribs crack under the pressure. The stun unit fell from the man's suddenly unresponsive fingers, and the smartgun operator kicked it away, grabbing the man's arm and exploding the elbow over her knee like a stick, spraying a red mist of blood into the air with a harsh snap before slamming him bodily to the ground with as much force as she could muster.
"Your commander really didn't think that one through very well," Vasquez remarked, then stepped over the prostrate and still howling guard and continued down the corridor to Charmaine's apartment.
The older woman opened the door almost before Vasquez had pressed the buzzer.
"I'm so glad you made it, what with the added security here." She nodded to a sly-faced man a few years younger than Vasquez with lank blond hair. "This is Thomas; he agreed to come as well. Come on in and we'll - holy shit on a cracker! What happened to you?"
Vasquez blinked.
"Excuse me?"
Charmaine raised a hand to the side of her face. Puzzled, Vasquez mirrored the action and brought away fingers wet with blood.
"Oh, that. I had a little run in with one of McDermott's pet gorillas on my way here."
"Funny." Thomas gave her a long, searching look. "You don't look like you're injured."
Vasquez met his gaze icily.
"I'm not."
There was an awkward silence.
"Are you a soldier?" Thomas said suddenly.
Vasquez looked at him, then shifted her gaze to her own combat fatigues, her boots, her dog tags and finally back to Thomas before saying, "No."
"You'll have to excuse him," Charmaine said flatly. "He don't like the military. Particularly not the Marine Corps."
"Buncha fuckin' time-wasters," Thomas muttered. "So full of the big I-Am, they don't have a clue what's going on out here. Retarded fucks."
"Didn't get in, huh?" Vasquez said slyly.
"Got in, yeah," Charmaine said. "He just didn't stay in."
"How long were you enlisted?" Vasquez asked Thomas, who spat onto the floor.
"Three days."
Vasquez did a double take.
"How long??"
"You heard me! I had a disagreement with my drill sergeant and they kicked me out! You wanna make something of it?"
Vasquez raised dark eyebrows.
"Why should I bother? You seem to be doing pretty well by yourself."
Ignoring Thomas' muttering, she looked around, interested and wondering what was going on. The apartment's only other occupant, a young girl of about twelve or thirteen, gave her a smile and a little wave. Vasquez frowned slightly. She'd seen that girl around in the corridor a lot, but never actually spoken to her.
Then again, Vasquez admitted grudgingly, she hadn't spoken to any of the others bar Charmaine before tonight.
"The girl over there," she said in an undertone to Charmaine, "who is she?"
A nervous undercurrent ran quickly through the other two.
"She's called Sarah Reddick," Charmaine said quietly. "She's here on a charge of arson and first-degree murder. The Company only put her here because no local institution would take her. They're waiting for acknowledgement from one of the colonial ones and then she'll be gone. We hope."
Vasquez raised an eyebrow.
"Arson and first-degree murder?"
"She poured gasoline over her parents while they slept and set them alight."
The smartgun operator stared.
"Jesus."
"Yeah," Thomas muttered, also keeping his voice low. "Apparently Daddy made the mistake of teaching baby Sarah what a will was, and that she'd be getting all her parents' money when they died. The kid put two and two together and then...well, that was that."
"How old is she?"
"Twelve. She was eight when she did it and she's been here four years. The social sector said that her parents must've been doing something pretty bad to make her kill them like that. Me, I don't believe a word of it."
Vasquez snorted. Few people ever credited young children with the capacity for acting on their own initiative. Bigger fools them; kids were just as capable of it as adults. Usually more so, because they usually couldn't foresee the consequences of their actions and hadn't learned enough about the world to understand there was a time and a place for everything.
"She's polite enough," Charmaine added.
The smartgun operator snorted again. She'd met people like Sarah; 'polite enough' right up until you upset them and they ripped your spine out through your belly.
"They're also the best and most reliable representatives in this place."
Vasquez' jaw dropped.
"A twelve-year-old psychopath and a jerk with a bad attitude are the best you have? If they're the cream, I don't want to meet the crap!"
"Most of the others wouldn't come."
The smartgun operator curled her lip scornfully.
"Afraid of the guards?"
"Yeah." Charmaine blew out a plume of smoke. "Ain't life a bitch?"
"On drugs," Vasquez muttered.
"You what?"
The younger woman glanced at her, then away again.
"That's what a friend of mine always used to say. Life's a selfish bitch on hard drugs."
"What happened to him?"
"He's dead," Vasquez said curtly. She didn't feel like going much into details about Drake just then.
"Sorry to hear that. What happened to him?"
"Never mind that," Vasquez answered. It wasn't any of Charmaine's business and besides, the woman would most probably not believe her.
"Then-" Charmaine began, before her front door was kicked open and she dropped her cigarette with an audible gasp. Next to her and across the room, Sarah and Thomas also froze, motionless.
Vasquez, who wanted to look over her shoulder so badly that her neck muscles were aching, resisted temptation. The newcomer was most likely no threat to her, and she'd find out about them soon enough.
There was the sound of heavy footsteps, footsteps which stopped just behind her chair.
"Juana Vasquez?"
"Who's asking?"
"I have orders to escort you back to your apartment."
"Orders?" Vasquez echoed, her tone bored. "From who? And on what charge?"
"You were placed under house arrest, effective from eighteen hundred hours last night. Mr McDermott informed you of this himself."
"He didn't say which house," Vasquez said dismissively, not bothering to turn round.
"You were also informed that you were not to leave the apartment except in the case of a dire emergency!"
"It was a dire emergency. I was bored."
A hand slammed down on her shoulder.
"You are to come with us immediately."
Without looking, Vasquez slammed a knuckle onto the man's hand and he jerked back, swearing viciously, no longer professional.
"Fucking bitch!" The guard looked over to his friends. "Hold her! I'm gonna teach her a lesson she won't forget in a hurry."
A harsh chatter of gunfire came from behind Vasquez and the three guards were thrown back by the force of the shots, two of them dead before they hit the ground and the third not far behind.
There was a long silence, one that was much louder than the sound of the gun had been. All eyes were on Sarah, who was holding a sleek black pulse rifle somewhat inexpertly. Just looking at the firearm made Vasquez' throat constrict with longing.
"They were very rude, weren't they?" Sarah said sadly.
"Where did you get that?" Even Vasquez spoke respectfully; you only risked upsetting the likes of Sarah Reddick if you had a very, very good reason, and preferably at least a butcher knife or claw hammer for a weapon as well.
"I borrowed it from a different guard. He was very rude when he found out it had gone." Sarah looked down forlornly, then up again, a bright smile on her face. "But he never knew it was me! Aren't I clever?"
"Very...clever." Vasquez forced the words out with a supreme effort; her throat seemed to have been paralysed. Sarah preened.
"Didn't they suspect anything?" Charmaine asked. Sarah waved a hand dismissively.
"Of course they didn't! They only really like to watch me if there are any matches or lighters around." She paused. "I can't think why," she added, without a trace of sarcasm.
She probably couldn't at that, Vasquez thought flatly. When they'd arrested her, Sarah had most likely stood in front of her parents' burning bodies with the gas can still in her hand and said, "What did I do?"
"Though the man who lived next door to me said he didn't think little girls should play with big guns," Sarah added sadly. "He was very rude as well. I taught him a lesson, though." That same brittle smile appeared on her face again. "He won't say anything naughty for the rest of his life!"
There was a long, long silence.
"I think," Vasquez said very carefully in a voice that felt like it was coming from a long way away, "that I'd better look after this for the minute." She nodded towards the pulse rifle.
"Yes." Even Thomas seemed relieved; despite his seeming hatred of the USCM, the pulse rifle would be far safer in Vasquez' hands than Sarah's. "Yes, I think that would be a very good thing."
Sarah looked shocked.
"But you can't! It's mine!"
Vasquez looked away for a few moments, and then back up at Sarah, pasting a smile on her face. It didn't exactly work. The smartgun operator hadn't had much practice in smiling.
"May I have it? Please?"
"I said it's mine!" Sarah's eyes were now bright and hard, glittering with a diamond fever. "Why should I give it to you? The guard lent it to me! It's mine!"
Vasquez took a deep breath and hoped like hell that this would work.
"Because I'm a Marine."
"So? So?" Now Sarah was pouting, a five-year-old expression that looked horribly out of place on her twelve-year-old face.
"So I've been trained how to use this particular kind of gun. Since you haven't, you could end up accidentally shooting someone with it." Vasquez swallowed in a dry throat. "And...that would be very rude, wouldn't it?"
There was a long, drawn-out silence.
"True," Sarah agreed complacently. "Okay then."
She held out the gun. Vasquez started to reach for it, then stopped. Taking hold of a pulse rifle while a raving lunatic had the trigger end wasn't usually the key to a healthy life.
"Just...leave it on the table," she said instead. "I'll take it with me when I go."
"You're leaving? After those men told you not to?" Sarah looked scandalised.
Vasquez gritted her teeth and counted to ten. It didn't seem to help.
"They told me I was to go back to my own house, didn't they? I'm just doing what they said."
"Are you? Oh, well, that's okay." Sarah looked at Thomas. "Do you want to see a drawing I did today?"
There was the barest hesitation before Thomas said, "Sure," and crossed over to examine it.
Vasquez felt a chill run down her spine. Between being locked in a room with Sarah or an alien, she'd almost rather take her chances with the bug. She made a mental note to barricade her front door and to tip Newt off as well. The kid was a nuisance, true, but Vasquez didn't want her dead, and certainly not like that.
"You've probably worked it out by now," Charmaine said, wheezing slightly. "This place is comprised of misfits, outcasts, all those who thought they could put one over on the Company. Thomas used to be a recruit in the Colonial Marines before he was kicked out for attempting to stab his drill sergeant with a hunk of broken glass. Sarah...well, Sarah goes without saying. Me and my boys were thrown in here just after I was caught looking at that file. There are plenty of others in this corridor as well; most of what society terms dangerous or undesirable."
Vasquez raised her eyebrows.
"So why did you want me to come here?"
Charmaine chuckled.
"What, you don't think it's a social call?"
"Involving the likes of Sarah and Thomas? I doubt it very much; particularly in Sarah's case with the amount of lighters or matches you must have kicking around. What do you want?"
"Still as gracious and charming as ever, ain't you?" Charmaine wheezed, then looked at Vasquez with slightly more interest. "Speaking of which, I didn't know they taught you to soothe psychos in the USCM."
"They don't," Vasquez answered absently, picking up the pulse rifle and checking it over. "We usually just blow their heads off; it's more fun and it doesn't take as long." She looked around to make sure that Thomas and Sarah were still occupied before grabbing Charmaine by the front and yanking her to one side. "Alright. You brought me here, you said it was all sorted, all fine and here I am with two people who would kill me as soon as look at me, and it doesn't help to think that good manners might save me from one of them because I don't have that many. You have--" she looked at an imaginary watch "--three seconds to improve my mood and convince me not to walk out that door right now."
"The Company is doing something, something weird."
Vasquez snorted.
"Hey lady, I've seen things you literally couldn't imagine, things that only come out of your worst nightmares and beyond, so don't fucking tell me what's weird, vale? Besides, they're a multistellar, multinational, multicolonial, mercenary-" Vasquez tried to think of another English word that began with M, failed, and settled for saying, "-mandarÍnes. Weird is what they do. You'll need to give me a much better reason to stick around besides the Company is doing something weird."
Charmaine glanced around.
"I can't. You don't think they'd let us stay here without precautions, do you? This place is most likely bugged and whatever you may think of us, we're not quite so dumb as to hold a tactical meeting in a room which transmits every sound back to our enemy!"
Vasquez' eyebrows shot up.
"Tactical meeting? Enemy? Don't make me laugh." She snorted. "Too late, you did." The smartgun operator leaned in and lowered her voice. "You're caught up in the sheer romance of the situation, aren't you? The torch-bearing peasants approaching the castle of Frankenstein, or Dracula? This isn't some story, Ashton; this is real life! You fuck up here, you don't get another life, you don't get any continues and you don't get an undo option either! There's no room for error in anything like this."
Charmaine met her gaze defiantly.
"We can handle it."
"Handle what?"
The older woman glanced around in a way Vasquez couldn't help feeling was needlessly melodramatic, then leaned in even closer.
"There have been...disappearances. People come to the other residents' doors, say they're allowed to leave. They go and we never see them again."
"I don't blame them," Vasquez said candidly. "If I had a chance of getting out of this hellhole, you wouldn't see me again either. How do you know they aren't really leaving?"
Charmaine snorted.
"Empty-handed? The Company've supplied furniture and clothes and the like, but I'd say even you have one or two things you'd like to take with you." She narrowed her eyes. "You listen to me, miss, I have two sons, good sons, and I happen not to want to see either of 'em vanished, thankyou oh so very fucking much!"
"I shouldn't worry," Vasquez drawled, "they'll probably take you at the same time." She shook her head. "You still haven't answered my question. Why should I stick around?"
Charmaine seemed slightly embarrassed.
"Well...I kinda figured...since you're a Marine and you gave those two in the corridor a fight they're not likely to forget in a hurry...you must know stuff we don't..." Her voice trailed off and she settled for looking at the younger woman hopefully.
Vasquez stared hard for a few minutes.
"You want me to give you self-defence lessons?" she said incredulously.
"Ideally," Charmaine answered, meeting the black eyes without flinching.
"Riiight." Vasquez sat down on a chair, hard. "Mierda, how do I get myself into these situations?" Charmaine heard her mutter.
"Will you do it?" she asked.
"No," Vasquez said, biting off the word at the end and getting abruptly to her feet, striding towards the door. "You're fucking crazy."
"That's what they kept saying to me," Sarah said, sounding faintly surprised.
"What about your daughter?" Charmaine said clearly.
Vasquez stopped, and then turned.
"I don't know how to make this any clearer without a DNA test; Newt is not my fucking daughter!"
"Right here and now she's as good as," Charmaine answered bitingly, refusing to be intimidated. "Who else has she got in this hellhole?"
"She lives with a friend of mine."
"Fine. When this friend of yours shows up, you can hand her over and forget all about her if the fancy takes you. But what happens until then? You gonna just turn her out? Because if you are, tell me and I'll look after her."
"You won't," Vasquez said flatly. "Not all the time you have the likes of Sarah Reddick dropping in for tea."
Charmaine quirked an eyebrow.
"Ah, so you do care about her."
"No!" Vasquez said sharply. "But I don't want her dead."
Charmaine brought the cigarette to her mouth and inhaled.
"Well, you just keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better," she said nonchalantly, blowing smoke out as she spoke.
"Listen to me." Seemingly in the blink of an eye, Vasquez was across the room and in Charmaine's face. "You have no idea what either of us went through, but I'll tell you this much; over half my platoon died to get that kid back safely and I'll stop her getting killed because given all the shit that went down, I don't see her being murdered by some psychopath when there are other people lying dead on a hellworld who gave their lives to get her out of it! I don't care about her and I guess if I had to say anything, I'd blame the deaths of my friends on her since it was her family that threw the shit into the fan in the first place, but I'll be damned if I let her die now after everything that we did to keep her alive! Do you understand me?"
"I get the general idea, yeah," Charmaine answered. If she was offended by the smartgun operator's tone, she hid it well. "So if you're so keen to stop her from dying, for whatever reason, why won't you agree to help us?"
"You tell me one thing." Vasquez tilted her head slightly to one side as she regarded the woman stonily. "If I do this, if you learn self-defence, what then? Are you going to try and take over this sector?"
"We just want to get out," Thomas said unexpectedly.
"To get out," Vasquez repeated tonelessly. "I see. And if you stand in the corridor with your little knives, waving your little placards and singing your little songs, what do you think McDermott's going to do?"
There was a somewhat perplexed silence.
"I'll tell you what he's going to do," Vasquez said at last, when it became apparent that they were all waiting for her to break it. "He's not going to waste time listening to you. He's not going to cave in just because a few outcasts ask him to-"
"Tell him, not ask him," Sarah put in flatly.
"Oh, well then, that makes all the difference," Vasquez retorted scathingly, then shook her head. "Like I say, he's not going to bother listening or giving in. All he's going to do is requisition a platoon of soldiers - probably not even Marines - to come in and shoot you all where you stand." She shrugged. "Why should he care about a few misfits? There are plenty more out there. All he has to do is pick 'em up and dump 'em here." The smartgun operator shook her head again. "What you're thinking of doing isn't going to get you anywhere except the mortuary in about two hours flat, if they even wait that long. Say what you like; you're on your own."
"We can handle these assholes," Thomas said, his tone deadly. Vasquez snorted.
"Yeah. You did real well against the three that wanted to mess me up, didn't you?"
"That's different! We weren't ready!"
"That's alright then." Vasquez was already halfway through the door. "You get your little gang together, and when these guys come down to sort you out, you just tell them that you're not ready. What do you think they're gonna say in return? Oh, sorry, our mistake; we'll wait just down the corridor and you give us a shout when you are?" She shook her head. "Forget it. If you come up with something worthwhile, I might be persuaded to listen. Until then, like I said; you're on your own."
She stalked out, slamming the door behind her, not stopping until she was almost outside her own apartment and only then because a voice said from behind her, "Drop the weapon and turn around slowly."
Vasquez sighed. The first thought that went through her mind was, I'm getting very tired of this, and it was partly this and the fact that she wanted to conserve the rifle's ammunition that saved the guard from an early grave. Besides, this guy was a grade-A asshole, but he didn't deserve to die for it. She spun the gun around and cracked the guard across the head with it, not hard enough to kill him, but hard enough to make sure he'd be asleep for some time.
Twenty guards here, and at least seven have already been taken out, a little voice inside her whispered. You better be more careful, unless you want to give them a genuine reason to keep you locked up here.
Vasquez grimaced and told the little voice to go fuck itself, then pushed open her door and stepped in. There was no sign of Newt in the living room. The occasional small splash from the bathroom gave some clue as to her location, however; baths were a real luxury on a colony world and Newt liked to indulge in them here as often and as long as possible.
Vasquez gave a kind of mental shrug. The more the kid kept out of her hair, the better. She swung the pulse rifle up, sighting down the barrel experimentally, and wished she'd thought to ask Sarah about extra magazines. It was full now, and the grenade launcher was primed (and next to useless in such a confined space) but Vasquez didn't like to think how quickly the ammo would run out if she came up against...
Against what? Aliens? If they had bugs here on Gateway, they'd have had to get them from Acheron, wouldn't they? And since their team had been the only one...unless a few colonists had somehow managed to get off...
"Wow!" Newt stood in the doorway, staring at the gun and interrupting Vasquez' train of thought (much to the smartgun operator's private relief; she hadn't liked the direction it had been travelling in). "Where'd you get that?"
"Nice, huh?" Despite the problems at Charmaine's, Vasquez' temper had been so much improved by having a weapon at her disposal again that she actually looked at Newt to answer. "A girl called Sarah Reddick lent it to me."
"Sarah?" Newt's jaw dropped. "Boy, you must've been nice to her!"
Vasquez blinked.
"You know her?"
"Uh huh. Ben told me about her. Is it true she burned her parents to death because they were bug eyed tentacles who had a lot of money which they wouldn't let her have?"
Vasquez blinked again. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
"Well, apart from the bug eyed tentacle part, yeah."
Newt shivered.
"Freaky."
Freaky was a very good way of putting it, in Vasquez' opinion.
So...what? I have to try and build some kind of rebellion? Some kind of anti-Company movement involving one person who's hardly in the best physical shape, one person who'd shoot me as soon as look at me and one twelve year old pyro-fucking-maniac? And if they're really the best and most reliable representatives, like Charmaine said, I don't think I want to meet the others.
The smartgun operator sat on the couch, leaning back and staring at the TV without really seeing it, and wondered for the first time in her life just what the hell she was supposed to do now.
Hicks forced his eyes open and groaned aloud, then wished he hadn't. Even groaning made his head hurt.
"Finally awake, are you?" Hudson said with a grin.
"Whassatime?"
"One twenty. You've slept the entire morning."
"What happened?"
"Same thing that usually happens to you in a bar. You got pissed and had to sleep it off."
"My head..."
Hudson's grin became positively wicked.
"I tried to warn you; that stuff packs one hell of a punch. You said something like...what was it now?" Hudson paused, then did a surprisingly accurate impression of Hicks' voice. "Hey Will; I'm not drunk! I don't get drunk! I never get drunk and I'll prove it as soon as you refill that glass!"
Hicks cringed, not just from the hangover.
"I said that? Oh man..."
"Yeah, along with several other things you probably don't want to remember," Hudson said, still grinning broadly.
"Oh man..."
"I didn't know you had the hots for your female drill sergeant during Basic."
"Oh man...!" Hicks sat up carefully then, when the top of his head didn't fall off, risked swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "Did anything good come of last night?"
"Dunno about good," Hudson said, his voice annoyingly cheerful, "but it was fucking entertaining!" He became a little more serious. "If you're talking about Ruin...you got a little too sloshed to really get anywhere."
"Shit," Hicks grated. He glanced up at his friend. "Maybe if you told me where she lived or...what?" This was said in response to Hudson's head, which was now shaking slowly.
"Dwayne, believe me when I say I've no fucking idea. Ru's...well, she vanishes every evening."
"And you've never followed her?"
Hudson snorted.
"What, are you kidding? I don't follow any of the other punters, why should I follow her? Besides, Ruin's..." He hesitated, wondering how best to phrase the next part. "Well...she's not someone you want to upset needlessly."
"I'll take that chance."
"Uh. Let me rephrase that. She's not someone I want to upset needlessly." Hudson paused. "Besides, I spoke to her last night. She's agreed to search Gateway, and if Newt isn't there, she'll come back here and we'll have to think again."
"I want to talk to her."
Hudson scrutinised the older man silently for a few minutes, then nodded slightly.
"Okay. Yeah, I was going to see her today anyway; I got her a booking on the shuttle to New Charlottetown." He flung the curtains open, causing Hicks to yelp and cover his eyes as the sun pierced through them like so many needles.
"C'mon," the comtech said heartlessly. "Fresh air'll do you good."
Hicks glowered at him through grainy eyes and didn't move. Hudson had to know how bad he was feeling.
"Have it your way." There was a positively evil glint in the comtech's eye as he grabbed the edge of the mattress and flipped it up, spilling the older man onto the floor. "You don't know how much I've wanted to do that to an NCO," Hudson added, smirking.
Hicks picked himself up, glaring at Hudson, and ran a hand through his hair gingerly.
"How are we going to find her?" he said. "You already said you don't know where she lives."
"I know how to find out, though," Hudson answered, a slightly smug expression on his face.
"How?"
"Follow the stink," the comtech said simply. "Dunno why she wants her home to smell of rotten eggs, but that's her business, and at least she smells alright when the punters show up."
Despite the fact that both men were physically fit, it still took some four hours before they managed to find Ruin's home, and even then they walked right past it without seeing it a couple of times. It was a strange building; leaves and grasses had been cemented together with sap to form a kind of cocoon.
Hudson froze as the stench hit him fully for the first time, triggering something deep inside.
"You know what this reminds me of?" he said suddenly, his casual tone trying to cover up the shakiness underneath.
Hicks nodded slightly, pale.
"Yeah. Acheron."
Hudson edged back.
"Think we should've brought weapons?"
Hicks shook his head.
"Your place isn't that far off. If there were bugs, you'd be the first to know about it."
There was a thoughtful pause.
"Thanks a fucking bunch, man!" Hudson said slightly shrilly at the end of it. "That's just what I wanted to hear!"
There was another, longer pause.
"So, do you want to go in?" Hicks said eventually.
"Uh...sure, man. After you."
Another silence.
"Y'know, I couldn't help but notice that you're not moving!" Hudson said.
Hicks hesitated, then put a cautious hand through the opening on the basis that if it didn't get ripped off, it was probably safe to follow it in.
He'd seen an ancient 2D movie when he was a kid; Watership Down. There had been a scene in there, hadn't there; one where the camera had panned through the rabbit warren, almost like seeing it through a rabbit's eyes. It was this image that came back to haunt him now; they stepped through one passageway and found themselves in an intersection with three others.
"You know man, I really don't like this," Hudson said nervously.
Hicks couldn't blame him. The structure...the heat...the goddamned stench...it all served to add to the illusion that they were back on Acheron, although the now familiar figure bending over a surface in the room did a lot to dispel that illusion.
"You're late," Ruin said briskly.
Hudson shook his head.
"Okay. You did that how?"
Ruin smiled slightly.
"There's very little I don't know, Will. Besides, you didn't think I'd be crazy enough not to put some form of security in here, did you?"
There was a silence.
"So..." Hicks said eventually. "Uh. Very strange place you have here."
Ruin raised her eyebrows.
"I like it. It reminds me of home."
Hudson's mind flicked back to last night, when he'd heard Ruin muttering in her sleep, saying something about a hive, and for the first time he found himself seriously wondering about where she'd come from.
"Actually, I'm glad you showed up," Ruin said laconically. "I want a favour."
"Oh really?" Hicks said, while Hudson occupied himself with studying the walls, almost as if he expected a facehugger to launch itself at him.
"I'm waiting for some people. If they come into your bar asking for me, tell them I've gone tracking and tell them how to find this place, if they don't already know. They can have my free drink as well if they want it. Also, if I do this job, and this Company of yours somehow finds out, they may well come here to find out what you know about it. You might want to bear that in mind."
"Let 'em come," Hicks said flatly.
"Yeah," Hudson said fervently, "and even if they try it, man, we're not gonna squeal!"
Hicks winced, touching his sore head gingerly.
"Let's not shout, anyway," he implored, then caught sight of something familiar on one of the surfaces and started towards it, frowning slightly. Before he reached it, Ruin had swept it off into a bag, favouring him with a bright smile.
"Don't mind my rubbish, Hicks. Did you come for something specific?"
"Yeah." Hudson held out the ticket. "Here. That'll get you to New Charlottetown, and that guy I told you about."
There was a slight silence while Ruin studied the ticket as though it meant something to her, then folded it over and slid it into a pocket with a nod.
"I'm still not sure he'll agree," Hudson warned. "You know he's no longer a Marine."
That in itself had been surprising enough; every single trooper who had come back from Acheron alive had resigned from the Corps. They'd also got pensions, although Hudson wasn't entirely sure how that had happened; even though he, Apone and Hicks definitely qualified for them, the others had had a good few years to go yet. He suspected the Company had just wanted to get them out of the way quickly and pulled strings.
Ruin smiled, an expression that was somehow unsettling.
"Let me worry about that part of it. You just get me on that shuttle."
"I want to go with you," Hicks said quickly. Ruin raised an eyebrow.
"And do what?"
Hicks, who wasn't used to people who sacrificed emotion for logic as a matter of course, floundered slightly.
"She's...the girl...she's important to me."
"That's not answering my question."
Hicks stared at her.
"Are you completely insensitive to other people's feelings?"
"People die, Hicks. People go missing. That's the way it is wherever you are. I've said I'll help you, but I still fail to see why you should come unless you have something relevant to offer."
"She needs me."
"By your own arguments, she's survived a fair few weeks without you. She can survive a little longer. Your own feelings for the girl make it near impossible for you to be considered. Suppose you lash out at the wrong person? Suppose you get drunk on this Gateway and blurt out our real purpose there?"
"I don't get drunk," Hicks said flatly.
"That's what you said last night," Ruin shot back, not missing a beat. "You said things then that you probably wish you could unsay...and one more thing; if this Company does have your kid, don't you think they'll watch you like a hawk the instant they know you're nearby? Maybe even move her out of your way to a colony, and then the heart alone knows that you'll never see her again. Also, if she knows where this place is, it's possible she might be able to get to it on her own and you should wait here for her."
"And how are you going to get inside Gateway?" Hicks demanded, fighting to keep a rein on his temper. "Nobody's allowed in or out without a valid passport."
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies." Ruin stepped towards the exit but Hicks moved rapidly into her path, putting his arm out to bar the way, a warning in his eyes.
"You need me."
"Actually, Hicks, you're wrong," Ruin said coolly, clearly not intimidated. "You need me, and have done ever since I first saw you."
"You're not the only one capable of something like this."
"No. But I'm the only one dumb enough to agree, and if you could do it, you already would have. Move."
Hicks shook his head, lips pressed tightly together. Ruin shrugged.
"Have it your way."
The Marine was never sure what happened next. All he was really aware of was soaring through the air for a very short time before hitting the opposite wall.
Ruin studied him for a few seconds in silence, then turned and walked out. It was the last they were to see of her for several weeks.
The sound of the door opening tugged Vasquez out of a rare good sleep, and she lay still in bed, eyes lightly closed. There was a blessed silence which lasted about thirty seconds before...
"Vasquez?" Someone was shaking her, not roughly, but insistently. "Vasquez, please get up. I wanna ask you something."
Vasquez growled something indiscernible.
"The secret to achieving a long, healthy and happy life is eating healthy food, drinking plenty of fresh water, taking lots of exercise, owning a pulse rifle and/or smartgun and above all, not waking me up!" she said acerbically without opening her eyes. "Now piss off!"
"'S not that. I jus' wanted to ask if you knew where it was."
"Where what was?" Vasquez demanded, still determined to go back to sleep.
"It. You know," Newt persisted, then ducked as the smartgun operator's hand came flying through the air in a backhand slap that would have knocked the girl off her feet had it connected.
It should perhaps be noted that Vasquez genuinely had no intention of hurting Newt; her action had been reflexive rather than deliberate. But it was still unnerving enough to ensure that when Newt spoke again, she did so from somewhere around ground level.
"I was just asking. On'y if you know, maybe you could take your gun and get rid of it before it's too late."
"What the fuck," Vasquez said through clenched teeth, "are you talking about?"
"That thing they took out of you," Newt said, straightening up and prudently stepping back out of arm's range.
Vasquez stared, suddenly wide awake, a feeling of cold dread seeping through her.
"You've been dreaming, kid," she said finally. "Go back to bed."
"But-"
"I said go back to bed!" Vasquez rolled over and closed her eyes. A few seconds later, she snapped them open again in shock. "Your bed, not mine*!"
Her irritation wasn't just due to the kid. It had been two days since she'd attacked the guards at Charmaine's and later in the corridor, yet nobody had come to challenge her about it and that probably meant they weren't going to, and that gave Vasquez the unnerving feeling that they'd become expendable. Being made to disappear from the world was bad. Being made to disappear from the world and being expendable...that was far worse.
Great. I'm officially dead and so's the brat.
"Are you gonna sleep the whole day?" Newt asked.
"Not at this rate," Vasquez muttered irritably.
"Only Charmaine's on the vid-phone. Has been for about ten minutes."
"What!?" Vasquez sat bolt upright, no longer tired. "Why didn't you wake me?"
Newt rolled her eyes in her childish exasperation of all things adult.
"I did! Least, I tried. Don't you remember?"
"No." Vasquez rubbed her forehead tiredly. "What'd I say?"
"I dunno but I wrote it down so's I could look it up in a Spanish dictionary," Newt said simply. "What's hoe dair mean?"
"Jod...never mind." Vasquez got to her feet. "Where'd you say she was?"
"Living room."
In the two days following that fateful meeting in her apartment, Charmaine had become an extremely frequent visitor. Hers and Vasquez' was possibly one of the strangest friendships ever to have come about, but something had obviously happened somewhere along the line to spark it off. Attraction of complete opposites, perhaps.
Wondering if it would be possible to dump Newt on Charmaine for a couple of nights a week, and knowing she could never bring herself to do it, Vasquez sat down at the table. After the fracas with the guard, she'd borrowed a mini vid-phone from another one of the residents. It was useless for anything more than about a mile away, but it worked fine for things like this.
"Hi."
"Hi." Charmaine sounded breezy, cheerful, making Vasquez clench a fist in irritation. "Didn't wake you, did I?"
"No, that's alright," Vasquez said bitingly, "I had to get up to answer the phone."
"Oh right. I was wondering...have you thought about what we discussed?"
"What?" Vasquez massaged her forehead tiredly. "What did we discuss?"
"About the self-defence thi-"
"No."
"No you haven't thought about it, or no you're not going to do it?"
"Both. I haven't thought about it because there's no way in hell I'm going to do it!"
"Why not?"
Candidly, Vasquez had no ready response. "I don't think it'll make any difference," she said flatly.
"That's alright for you to say; you can knock the shit out of anyone who threatens you! What'm I s'posed to do? What's my defence?"
"Passive smoking?" Vasquez offered pleasantly.
"Oh, you're in a real sunny mood this morning," Charmaine said sourly.
"Look, not to be rude or anything, but did you call for a reason other than chit-chat? Because I've got a lot going on."
There was a slight silence.
"Someone went missing last night," Charmaine said finally.
Vasquez smothered a yawn.
"Yeah? And?"
There was a silence as Charmaine tried to find a way to phrase what was on her mind.
"I'm the...I've been here for the longest time. Ever since the files-"
"Yeah, what did you see on those files, anyway?" Vasquez said curiously.
The older woman snorted. "Something that belonged in a fucking movie. It was some kinda animal with a head shaped like a banana. Isn't that weird? It said something about acid blood as well; like that's possible!"
Vasquez stared, feeling the bottom start to drop out of her world.
"What?" she said, somewhat hoarsely.
"Yeah, weird huh? Said something else about an old ship but I didn't pay much attention since that was when the security guards came in and-"
"Look, just shut up for a minute and let me think," Vasquez interrupted curtly. "No, scratch that. First tell me when you saw those files. Then shut up and let me think!"
Charmaine shrugged.
"Lessee...about eight months ago, I think. Yeah, it was, 'cause the boys' birthday is in April and we had to cancel the party 'cause the goddamn Company wanted us moved here."
Vasquez stared at her openly. "That's not possible," she said finally.
"Why not?"
"Because Ripley was the only person who knew about these things, and she only gave her report to Gateway five months ago."
"Never heard of any Ripley," Charmaine said bluntly.
"Wish to Christ I fucking hadn't," Vasquez muttered under her breath. Aloud she said, "Did you notice the date on these files?"
"'Bout a year ago. What's going on?"
Vasquez was wondering the same thing. She'd studied the reports Ripley had provided before going down to Acheron, more for her own entertainment than because she believed there was any truth in them, and they'd all been dated a month or so after the other woman's arrival in Gateway.
"A year ago," Vasquez echoed, more for something to say than anything.
They knew. Weyland-Yutani knew all along what was on that planet, though Christ only knows who they found it out from. They knew, and then they sat there smirking as Ripley told her tale before branding her insane.
The smartgun operator shook her head. If all that was true-and Charmaine wasn't imaginative enough to make anything like that up-then that begged the question...actually, Vasquez didn't want to think about what questions it begged. Let alone the answers.
Did McDermott know? Possibly; he had the definite bearing of one who made it his business to find out anything and everything, not to mention his seemingly being in charge of this area.
And where do Newt and I fit into all of this? Vasquez wondered, glancing over at the door leading into her housemate's room. Silencing...no. No, because if that's what they wanted, we'd be dead already. And why didn't they bring Hicks, or Hudson, or any of the others? What was so special about us?
"Penny for 'em," Charmaine said, taking a deep drag on her cigarette.
"What?" Jerked out of her reverie, the smartgun operator glanced over at the older woman.
"D'you know something about the files?" Charmaine said suddenly.
Vasquez grimaced, remembering too late that slow body didn't always mean slow mind.
"To be honest, it sounds like you stumbled across some kind of bioengineering project," she said as dismissively as she could.
"Riiight." Charmaine studied her through suspicious eyes. "So why d'you look like you just saw a ghost?"
Vasquez' mind flicked ahead rapidly, trying to find a good substitute for the truth and decided to alternate between telling it and lying through her back teeth. It was a tried and tested technique, one that had worked very well for her over the years.
"I was sent to a colony on a mission to check out a genetic project. The creatures had gotten loose and most of us were killed."
There was an awkward silence.
"I'm sorry," Charmaine said finally.
No you're not, Vasquez thought. There was no irritation in it; it was pure matter-of-fact. You couldn't understand it until you'd been there, and you couldn't feel sorry about anything like that until you understood it.
There was another, longer silence.
"God, I hate this place!" Charmaine burst out suddenly. "There's no privacy!"
"Tell me about it," Vasquez muttered, the double meaning fortunately lost on Charmaine.
"There's no security either. If anyone took a fancy to anything here...if some kind of raving lunatic got out and came here or something..."
"Ye-es..." Vasquez said doubtfully, while privately thinking that if you really wanted a raving lunatic, then Sarah Reddick would probably fit the bill pretty well. "There are the defences, though," she added, more to see where this was going than any real desire to console Charmaine.
The other woman favoured her with a sour glance.
"If a six year old kid could get past the security defences, how tough could they be?" She shook her head. "Look, I probably shouldn't be saying this to you, but me'n'my boys're getting out. Soon. This Friday, if possible; that way we'll have the weekend before they're missed from school. Like I said, I've been here the longest and I think I may be next to disappear. You might want to come along. You and that kid of yours, before it's too late," Charmaine added, and cut the transmission before Vasquez could reply.
The smartgun operator sat deep in thought for a few minutes, then glanced up.
"Newt?"
Newt, who had already learned that Vasquez never spoke directly to her unless it was of paramount importance, blinked.
"Yes?"
"How did you get past the guards into this corridor?"
"Through the airducts, of course," Newt said, as if the smartgun operator had just asked a ridiculously stupid question.
"Do you know how far they go?"
"You're going to take a look around outside, aren't you?" Newt said.
"What? No!" Vasquez lied, glancing around quickly to see if anyone else had heard the child's accusation. "What makes you think that?"
Newt shrugged.
"Well, Char was talking about it earlier and I didn't think you'd let some pendo like that guy who came round tell you where you could and couldn't go."
Vasquez shook her head.
"Alright, firstly it's pendejo; if you're going to insult someone behind their back, at least get it right. Secondly, I really don't know what you're talking about. If McDermott asks, I'll tell him the truth; that Charmaine was saying how worried she was that some psycho or burglar could get in through the airducts, so I volunteered to check it out for her because I'm a nice, caring person who just lives to make other people happy."
Newt was silent for a few minutes, then said, "Boy, if he believes that, he must be dumb."
Vasquez shot her a look and Newt, who had already learned to recognise the danger signs, automatically slid off the sofa and started for her room.
"Hold it!" Vasquez said sharply. "I'm not done yet."
Newt froze, then glanced around.
"Um. Is this about me taking the last chicken leg for breakfast?" she asked apprehensively.
Vasquez glared at her.
"No, but thankyou for owning up. When you were back on Acheron, did anything come in, any reports, anything concerning that ship?"
Newt shrugged.
"Maybe."
"Maybe? What kind of fucked-up answer is maybe?!" Vasquez demanded sharply.
Newt looked at her with exaggerated patience.
"I'm only six. They didn't show reports and stuff to me. I hadn't even finished the first set of reader books when...when it happened."
"Shit." Vasquez whirled, smashing a fist into the wall in frustration.
There was a delicate silence.
"Vasquez?" Newt said eventually. "Is something, uh, wrong?"
"What do you think?" Vasquez grated, without parting her teeth.
Newt was silent for a couple of minutes, then said, "I think I'm gonna go to my room until you're in a good mood again."
"The way things are going now, kid, you'll be waiting a long fucking time," Vasquez muttered, more to herself than to the girl.
"It's not my fault any of this happened," Newt dared to protest, half stepping back from the look Vasquez turned on her.
"No? Wasn't it your family who brought the first bug into Hadley's Hope?" The smartgun operator shook her head. "Nothing personal, kid, but you and I both know it would've been better if your mother had shot your father rather than bring him back to the colony, because then there's a good chance that all those other people would still be alive!"
There was a stricken silence. Newt's face was white as chalk, a direct contrast to Vasquez who-if the slow red creeping over her own visage was anything to go by-knew that even she'd overstepped the line.
"You know what?" Newt said suddenly, shaking all over. "I hope they do have one of those things! And I hope they catch you sneaking around where you're not s'posed to and I hope they feed you to it!"
Vasquez, who-if the truth be known-was feeling more than a little uncomfortable at what she'd said, raised a black eyebrow, no trace of her emotions showing on her face.
"And if they do, what's to stop them from taking you next?" she answered implacably, trying to ignore the sudden fear the girl's words had ignited. She was no coward by anyone's standards, but as Hicks had once said, nobody had ever expected to face anything like the aliens.
"I survived on Acheron! I can survive here!" Newt glared at Vasquez. "I would've been just fine without you and your friends barging in!"
"Actually, you wouldn't," Vasquez said coolly, "reason being, that precious colony of yours most probably went up in smoke just after we left. A quicker death than facehuggers, I'll grant you, but still death. As for surviving here, if you could make it on your own, you'd never have come to me for help."
Newt's glare intensified.
"I wish I never had now!"
"Well, that fucking makes two of us," Vasquez shot back, not missing a beat, and stalked out the door, slamming it behind her hard enough to make it rattle in its frame.
You're probably reading too much into this, something inside her whispered. Charmaine just saw something...something similar to the aliens, that's all. No reason for you to worry about it.
Right, another little voice said. Banana shaped head...acid for blood...yup, must be a million things like that around.
Vasquez thought about this, then wished she hadn't. Whatever was going on, she was determined to at least find out even if she couldn't do anything.
Why? Let 'em die here, if that's what they want. If the Company plan to develop their own little alien army, that's their affair, not yours.
Vasquez shook her head. That was all very well, but if they really took a dislike to her, she was prepared to bet everything she owned (such as it was) that hers would be the next body lined up for the facehuggers. And Newt...the kid was a pain, but she didn't deserve to die like that.
Vasquez kept moving silently. Skills learned on stealth exercises came in useful now as she moved noiselessly into a doorway, waiting as a pair of scientists walked by, failing to see her in the poor light. Airducts...airducts...where were the airducts?
It took three circuits before she managed to find them and another two before the guards standing in front of them had left. Glancing around, Vasquez unfastened the grilles covering the left and middle ducts, then crawled into the middle one. It took some effort on her part to be able to latch the grille behind her, but she managed in the end and started crawling again. She'd been going for about ten minutes (seemingly the longest of her life) when someone spoke up from underneath.
"Hey, I got movement!"
The smartgun operator pricked up her ears slightly. Marines. For a minute she seriously considered backing out, talking to them, then reluctantly dismissed the idea. Whichever way you looked at it, she wasn't supposed to be there, and somehow Vasquez didn't think the Company would baulk at a little thing like murder...and McDermott would probably issue medals all around if it was her.
"Where?"
"Down there, down the left airduct!"
In spite of the physical discomfort, Vasquez grinned tightly. Suckers.
A smell, one that was irritatingly familiar but which she couldn't quite identify, filtered through the vents. If she hadn't known better, Vasquez would almost have been prepared to swear something had died in there.
Absorbed in her own thoughts, the smartgun operator didn't notice the shaft until it was too late.
It was only about eight feet long and the grille at the end flew open as Vasquez hit it, falling an additional six feet before hitting the ground and tucking into a roll, then straightening up and looking around. Hot pain flashed up her left ankle as she put her weight on it and she winced, then kept moving. Time to rest it later...once she'd figured out what that stink was...
Memory kicked in just as she spun around suddenly, instinctively, providing her with not just the answer but a tag line from a movie she'd watched years ago into the bargain.
Fear is not knowing. Terror is finding out.
The queen opened her mouth and hissed into Vasquez' face.
New Charlottetown was clean and green, as the commercials liked to put it. Rather than turn into the typical rat warren which seemed to be the fate of all other cities that the Company got their claws into, the ruling body had decided to surround every building with ten metres of grassland. Larger and more important buildings, such as malls or cinemas, got thirty.
H Block was luxurious with a capital L. The apartments were large even for New Charlottetown, furnished in the most comfortable and advanced style money could buy.
And in the case of ex-Marine Daniel Spunkmeyer, that was a hell of a lot. Every single room was crammed full of the latest technology. The living room in particular boasted a nine foot by six viewing screen, with DVD players and a full size virtual reality simulator hooked up, so you could observe the movie world from inside. On the opposite wall was a stereo system the size of a small car and shelves containing over five hundred CDs and DVDs...and those were just the favourites. Mundane trivialities such as furniture had been stuffed in as a kind of afterthought.
Of course, where you get well-financed people and luxurious apartments, you get salespeople, Spunkmeyer thought irritably as he cracked open the door for the fourth time that day.
"Look, for the last time, I do not want to buy anyyy-hello." Spunkmeyer pulled the door open wider, sliding smoothly from irritation to flirtation without a hint of mental gear crunching.
"Daniel Spunkmeyer?"
A slight hint of suspicion crept into the young man's voice as he said, "Who's asking?" Not that he minded salespeople looking like this one, but reporters were another matter...and he'd had plenty of those since returning from Acheron.
"I need a pilot. Will Hudson told me to look you up."
Spunkmeyer's eyes clouded over slightly, and he shook his head.
"No. Sorry, but no. I'm not interested." He started to shut the door, only to find the caller had placed her arm on it and was holding it open against him seemingly with no effort at all.
For a few moments they stared at each other. Then Spunkmeyer said softly, "Take your hand off my door."
"I can't do that. I'm sorry."
"Last warning."
"Do you think Hudson would have sent me if it wasn't important?"
"I think that firstly if you don't get your hand off my door this minute I'm gonna push you off and secondly that Will Hudson just got knocked off my Christmas card list for the next ten years!"
"That's not answering my question."
Spunkmeyer shook his head.
"I said no. I'm retired."
"Funny; I don't remember asking your opinion on the matter." She raised a black eyebrow. "Give me five minutes and I'll change your mind; that won't hurt you and if at the end you still want me out after you've heard what I have to offer you, I'll go and you'll never see me again. All I ask is five minutes."
"There's nothing you can offer me that I could possibly want," Spunkmeyer said flatly.
His visitor set her jaw ever so slightly.
"Nothing? Are you sure?"
There was a silence.
"Five minutes," Spunkmeyer said abruptly, and stepped aside enough to let her in.
Ruin smiled very slightly. Her contacts had really turned up gold on this one, and she didn't think Spunkmeyer would turn her away, not when he'd heard what she could give him in return.
Leading her into the living room, Spunkmeyer went through into the kitchen and poured himself a coffee, pointedly not offering her one.
Ruin didn't care. She didn't do drugs in any way, shape or form, and caffeine was pretty high on that list as far as she was concerned. Glancing around, she raised her eyebrows.
"Nice place you have here."
"Yeah, it's great, and the clock's ticking. So-since I'm not interested in money and we might as well get that clear right here and now-what can you offer me?"
Ruin told him.
Spunkmeyer listened in silence for a long time, then when she had finished, he stared at her, pale.
"Goddamn." His voice was hoarse. "You...seriously? You can do that?"
"Of course," Ruin answered, as though it was the most trivial of considerations.
"Yeah." Spunkmeyer continued staring at her as though he'd never seen another person before, then gave a slightly shaky laugh. "Fuck me, yeah." He downed the remains of his drink in a single gulp and slammed his mug down on the table. "You got yourself a deal. Yeah. We can leave as soon as you're ready."
Ruin shrugged.
"No time like the present. But let's get one thing clear right now; you wait until after I've found Newt before you get the goods."
"Goods?" Spunkmeyer looked genuinely wounded. "That's hardly a fitting term this day and age."
"Wrong, Dan. This day and age, it's the most fitting term there is."
There was a silence.
"If you're fucking with me on this..." Spunkmeyer began. Ruin waved a hand dismissively.
"Please. I don't make empty offers. I'll play straight with you all the time you play straight with me."
"...Yeah," Spunkmeyer said. It seemed to be all he could say.
"Good. I'll wait for you at the shuttle depot." Ruin raised her eyebrows. "And close your mouth, Dan; you'll suck in a chestburster."
She turned and walked out noiselessly, leaving Spunkmeyer still staring after her and wondering exactly who he'd agreed to team up with.
"Some friend you are," Hicks muttered.
Hudson rolled his eyes.
"Dwayne, for the last time, I am not going to go against Ruin! I'm sorry she threw you into the wall, but you did get in her way." Hudson paused in the middle of pulling a pint. "And she was right, as well," he added. "They don't know Ruin; once Dan gets her there, the Company won't suspect her of looking for Newt."
Hicks frowned, his train of thought twitching onto a different line.
"How's she going to convince Dan to fly her there, anyway?" he said.
"Maybe she thinks she can offer him a date," Hudson said, smirking. "I know I wouldn't say no. What?" This was to Dietrich, who had kicked him on the ankle. "I want a little action. You've already got your guy."
"You do?" Hicks said, glancing at Dietrich.
"You don't have to sound quite so surprised," Dietrich said, frost dripping off every word.
"She's had a few dates with a guy who works the vid rental," Hudson offered helpfully.
"Actually, I'm thinking of kicking him to touch," Dietrich added lazily. "He's gotten so boring lately."
"Anyway," Hudson added, "maybe that's Ruin's angle. She can't be too much older than Spunkmeyer. I think he'd be pretty interested."
"What, now?" Dietrich said sceptically. "So soon after Ferro kicked the bucket?"
The other two were silent. It had been fairly common knowledge that Spunkmeyer had had a crush on Ferro, who had been both amused and exasperated by this in turn.
Hudson shrugged, breaking the moment.
"Gotta be worth a try."
"Yeah," Hicks said eventually, "but you're forgetting one thing. This is the guy who's refused point blank to even ride in another shuttle, much less fly one. He requested the strongest sedatives available for his flight to New Charlottetown and supposedly spent the whole journey in his cabin until they finally relented and let him rent a spare stasis pod."
Hudson shrugged again. "Ruin has her ways." He paused. "Though I guess I'd like to know exactly what she did offer him."
"Ruin is a very strange person," Hicks said bitingly. "For all we know, she dug something up on Dan and threatened him with blackmail."
"She may be strange, but she's helping you," Hudson pointed out.
"Yeah. But she didn't seem too surprised when I asked her. She said, and I quote, you need me, Hicks, and have done ever since I first saw you." Hicks frowned as this sank in for the first time. "How did she know my name?"
Hudson blinked, momentarily thrown.
"Say what?"
"Ruin. How did she know my name?"
The comtech shrugged, polishing another glass. It didn't really need polishing but Hudson was determined to act like a barman even if what he had wasn't strictly a bar, and barmen polished glasses when they weren't fixing drinks.
"She musta heard me use it when you showed up."
"The whole goddamned planet heard you when Dwayne showed up," Dietrich muttered, not quite under her breath.
Hicks shook his head.
"You've only ever used my first name since I got here. Ruin called me Hicks. And I'm damn sure I'd have remembered meeting her before." He paused. "So how did she know?"
Hudson raised his eyebrows.
"How does Ruin know anything? I've no fucking idea, and that's the truth. So long as she finds the kid, does it matter?"
Hicks didn't answer. He had the nagging feeling that yes, it did matter very much, although for the life of him he couldn't think why.
The queen tilted her huge head very slightly to one side. She hadn't moved; either she was too nervous of leaving her eggs or she didn't consider Vasquez a threat.
Of course, the smartgun operator thought bitterly, she doesn't even have to move. The room was small enough for the queen to decapitate Vasquez with a single swipe of one hand. The thought that the creature might feel threatened by her was laughable.
Glancing around, she caught sight of a securcam mounted on the wall and briefly considered waving to try and attract help.
Yeah, right. Go ahead. Then try and explain what the fuck you're doing here, if they even send anyone down to help you at all. Face it; you're on your own for this one.
Vasquez remembered Operations, when Hudson had suggested the idea of the aliens having a queen. She'd never seen such a creature on Acheron itself, but it had made a strange kind of sense. The smartgun operator backed off slowly, never taking her eyes off the queen, not stopping until her back hit the wall.
There was a slurping sound as the swollen ovipositor attached to the queen's belly deposited another egg, wet with mucus.
Eggs. Vasquez hadn't noticed them immediately; the queen's presence had driven such subtleties from her mind. Now, though, she wondered how she could have missed them. There were at least thirty in the room; thirty-one, including the one that had just been laid.
Okay. Great. So the big one's not going to kill you straight off. Now, what are you going to do about all the little ones?
Next to her, an egg creaked open. Vasquez knew better than to take a look inside; instead she looked up to the airduct.
Nothing. It was a sheer vertical drop, too high and too far for her to climb back up. There was a door but it was directly behind the queen, and Vasquez didn't fancy her chances at getting to it. Not to mention it was most probably locked.
Well, you thought the Company were breeding aliens. You thought they'd found them before Ripley ever got back.
Don't you just hate it when you're right, Vaz?
There was a scratching sound as the facehugger emerged. It moved slowly at first, almost as if afraid to leave the safety of its egg, then gathered itself together and leapt. Vasquez dropped to the ground reflexively, feeling the facehugger's tail drag along her shoulder as it passed over her, and made her decision. Even getting eviscerated by the queen would be better than a chestburster.
The smartgun operator crawled forward rapidly on her belly, squirming among the eggs, trying not to think about the facehugger that was undoubtedly scuttling towards her.
Something landed on her shoulders, something small and multilegged. Vasquez twisted around, one hand up to protect her face, the other over her throat as the facehugger thrashed wildly, trying to get a hold. Acid saliva, not as toxic as the blood but still corrosive enough to do some serious damage, burned into her palm.
The smartgun operator gritted her teeth, told herself that she was not going to die, at least, not like this, and somehow managed to find the strength to hurl the creature away from her, staggering to her feet, barely aware of the stinging pain in her hand.
There was a whip like sound as the creature leapt towards her for another attack, followed by another, far more welcome sound; that of gunfire. The facehugger exploded in a shower of acid, causing Vasquez to duck backwards and the queen to set up an enraged screeching that set the smartgun operator's teeth on edge. Dimly, she registered that the door behind the queen was now open, framing her rescuer.
"Come on, move! Get out of there!"
Vasquez didn't waste time arguing. The queen had twisted her head around to view this new threat, and the smartgun operator was on her feet and running past her blind side before the creature's attention shifted again. Something clipped her on the shoulder, a slight brush of air, but Vasquez had ducked under the queen's bloated abdomen, rolled and literally thrown herself through the door into the man there, knocking them both flying.
"Shut the goddamned door!"
A faint surge of irritation coursed through Vasquez; who the fuck did this guy think he was, prancing in and giving her orders?
The guy who also happened to prance in and save your ass, something inside her whispered, and besides, don't you think it's a little stupid to argue leadership when you're about a nanosecond away from being bug food?
Vasquez rolled off the man, leapt to her feet and slammed one hand onto the mechanism, causing the door to whine shut, then turned to face her rescuer properly and took a deep breath.
"Thanks." It was harder to say that than she'd thought; thanking people wasn't something she'd had a lot of practice in.
"Welcome." The man got to his feet, brushing himself off, and Vasquez noticed for the first time that he carried himself like someone who was not only physically fit, but who knew how to use that fitness. Like a soldier.
Like a Marine.
"And next time you decide to play chicken with an alien queen, ma'am," the stranger continued, "you might want to take some kind of weapon along. They're bastards when they're cornered."
Vasquez stiffened, her pride stung. "They're bastards at any time," she informed him caustically, "and don't you dare try to fucking tell me otherwise!"
"I wasn't going to. In fact I..." The man turned around to look at her fully for the first time, and the colour drained from his face.
"Well?" Vasquez demanded irritably, after about a minute had passed. "Are you gonna say something or stand there staring at me? Because I have to get back. And I mean now."
When he still didn't answer, she shrugged and strode past him. He'd saved her life, but that didn't mean she had to chat with him. She'd got about halfway down the corridor before he spoke again, hoarsely this time.
"Vasquez?"
The smartgun operator stopped in her tracks and spun around, alarm warring with curiosity. If he was one of McDermott's lackeys...
He half turned, wearing the expression of someone who's desperately trying to stop his house of cards from tumbling down.
"Is it really you?"
Vasquez stared hard at him, memory beginning to surface for the first time, and felt her own house of cards start to collapse.
"Gorman?"
They continued to stare at each other then, neither willing to risk breaking the spell by saying anything.
"They told me you were dead," Gorman said eventually. He was still wearing an expression which said he seriously doubted his own sanity.
"They told me you were," Vasquez answered.
There was a beat of silence before Gorman said, "And the others?"
More silence.
"I haven't seen them."
A third silence. Vasquez got the distinct impression that Gorman didn't want to be the first to break it and she fixed him with a shrewd look. "You know, I never thought I could be pleased to see an officer," she said bluntly. "Least of all you."
The lieutenant managed a tired smile. "I never thought I could be pleased to see you either."
Vasquez continued to study him intently. He looked even worse than she felt, like he hadn't slept or eaten in weeks, but that was only part of it. There was something in him...he looked almost desolate.
"Where are you living?" Gorman said. His tone didn't have the brisk, military academy spin that Vasquez was used to hearing either.
The smartgun operator snorted. "Living? I'm a prisoner in a luxury apartment, courtesy of the fucking Company."
Gorman smiled again, and Vasquez finally managed to pin down what was bothering her about him. He didn't just look haggard, he looked old, as though he'd aged twenty years in the few months they'd been back.
"I've been locked in a four by six cell ever since we got back. I think you got the better end of the deal."
"Yeah?" Vasquez snorted again. "Well, at least you didn't have to share it with anyone."
"What?" Interest flamed in Gorman's eyes. "Who else is with you? Hicks? Hudson?"
"Don't I wish," Vasquez muttered. "No. I've got landed with the Newt."
"Newt?" The lieutenant's brow creased as he tried to think of a face to connect to the name. "Newt?"
Vasquez shot him a look that verged on the suspicious. "You remember; the brat Ripley dragged out of the airducts."
Gorman's face cleared. "Oh, that Newt."
"Of course that Newt! How many Newts do you know?" Vasquez paused as something sank in. "Ripley. Where's-"
Gorman was already shaking his head. "She's dead."
Vasquez narrowed her eyes. "You thought I was this morning."
"The operative word being thought; I hadn't seen your body. I saw hers, though. The chest was...well, you know."
The smartgun operator felt her throat tighten. She couldn't honestly say that she'd liked Ripley, although she'd respected the older woman, but nobody, nobody deserved to die like that.
"Did you see any others?" she asked, as they started walking down the corridor.
Gorman shook his head. "No. There was just you, me and Ripley here. Now there's just you and me. Guess what the next step is?" They approached an intersection and Gorman slowed down slightly. "How do we get back?"
Vasquez glanced at him sharply. "We?"
"Look." Gorman shot a look over his shoulder to make sure they weren't being watched, then lowered his voice anyway. It never hurt to play it safe. "Let's get one thing straight. I am not going back there, back to the facehugger that is undoubtedly waiting for me even as we speak." He started walking, and Vasquez moved to keep up, both of them trying to avoid being noticed.
"I only have two beds," Vasquez said flatly.
"I'll sleep on the couch. Or on the floor. Or in the bath or the kitchen or...hell, I don't give a shit if you stuff me in your closet." Gorman put on a burst of speed and drew in front of the smartgun operator, then swung around to face her. "I don't think a roof is too much to ask after what just happened."
There was no arguing with that, Vasquez admitted. Besides, even Gorman had to be better company than Newt, and at least she could trust him not to brand her insane.
"Alright. Wherever it is, it's heavily guarded. We just need to find the most security shits and work from there."
"Are you insane?" Gorman seized hold of Vasquez' shoulders, arresting her movement. "I have spent every day since we got back in the company of security shits, as you call them, and I can safely say I don't want to see any more as long as I live!"
"Yeah?" Vasquez broke his hold expertly and without really thinking about it. "And how long's that gonna be once the fucking Company decides you're more trouble than you're worth?"
"They decided that some time ago. Why do you think I'm out here? I heard them talking about how they'd got all they needed from me, so all I was good for was impregnation." Gorman paused. "I decided not to wait around for that," he added with delicate sarcasm. "When they took me into the corridor leading to the lab, I managed to get free and escape."
Vasquez raised a sarcastic eyebrow. "What, you've just been wandering around pretending to be a medtech or something? You faint at the sight of fucking blood!"
"That was never proved!" Gorman took one or two deep breaths, then shook his head wryly. "Actually, I took a leaf out of the kid's book. I've been hiding in the ventilation shafts. Then I happened to hear them talking about the queen and thought if I could find her, maybe I could do something." He leaned against the wall. "It took me another two days of spying on people before I could find out where they were keeping her, then I managed to sneak in and got there about the same time you did. You know the rest."
"Yeah," Vasquez muttered. "Though I have trouble believing it." She shook her head. "I should have brought the fucking pulse rifle," Gorman heard her mutter, and his interest quickened.
"You have a pulse rifle?"
"Yeah. For what good it'll do me back in the fucking cell." Vasquez knew it would have made no difference, that the guards would have shot her on sight if they'd seen her carrying a weapon, but that didn't help shake the feeling that there must have been a way around that.
"You're injured," Gorman said suddenly.
"I twisted my ankle," Vasquez said dismissively. "It'll heal."
"That wasn't what I meant." Seeing the smartgun operator's look, the lieutenant nodded towards her arm.
The queen's talons had been so sharp, and the smartgun operator had been so high on adrenaline that she hadn't even been aware of the gouges until now. Blood had dribbled down, crusting her arm and hand in an interesting pattern.
"We'll need to get that cleaned up," Gorman said. "There's no telling what kind of toxic bacteria or diseases those bastards have. For now, though..." He tore a strip off his shirt. "Hold out your arm."
Vasquez jerked away. "I can apply my own field dressing, thank you so very fucking much."
Gorman rolled his eyes.
"Yes, alright, I take your point and I'm sure grunts, Latinas and feminists everywhere are proud of you! Now you can take mine; we don't have much time and it'll be quicker to let me do it than to fumble around one handed on your own."
"We don't have time for either of us to screw around," Vasquez said acerbically. "It can wait until we-"
"Give me your arm right now, Marine! That's an order!"
Training brought the smartgun operator's arm up and out before her brain fully registered the words and weighed in with the staggering fact that it had been someone like lieutenant Gorman who had spoken them.
"You..." she began, as Gorman wound the makeshift bandage around her arm.
"They don't approve of officers barking like sergeants," Gorman said matter-of-factly, "but I still say it's a useful skill."
Vasquez eyed him narrowly. "Yeah. If you'd been as decisive on Acheron, maybe we wouldn't be in this shit."
"You think not?" Gorman finished the dressing. "Think again. We were set up. Weyland-Yutani knew damn well what had happened to that colony."
"Then why send us?"
Gorman made a guttural noise of exasperation. "Do we have to discuss this right here and right now? In case it escaped your notice, neither of us are supposed to be here! People are undoubtedly closing in on our location even as we speak and if we're caught there'll be no time for explanations of any kind!"
"What?" Vasquez said flatly. Gorman rolled his eyes.
"If we stay here much longer, we're screwed!"
"At last, you're talking in English." The smartgun operator strode away, still limping slightly, and Gorman hurried to keep up.
"How long is it going to take to get back to your place?"
"No fucking idea. Why?"
Gorman closed his eyes and counted to ten, then without opening them or parting his teeth, said, "Because we'll need to change that bandage in an hour or so. You're bleeding right through it. And I would like some reassurance that we're not going to be wandering around long enough for me to finish my shirt and have to start on my pants."
Vasquez eyed the bandage speculatively, then the shirt it had come from.
"There's enough of it."
"Yeah, I know. I had to jump a civilian almost as soon as I got clear of the guards." Gorman glanced away, embarrassed. "Guess I should've checked to make sure he was the right size first. And you can stop looking so surprised," he added, more waspishly. "I may lack field experience, but I'm still a Marine. I went through basic training same as you did." He considered. "More so. They're tougher on officers than they are on grunts."
"They fucking should be with what you earn," Vasquez said tartly.
Gorman shot her a dirty look and didn't answer.
Are you fucking crazy?
This question had been reverberating over and over again in Spunkmeyer's mind, and he didn't think it would have made him feel any better if he'd actually been able to answer it.
You swore never to set foot in another ship, much less pilot one. So what the fuck are you doing now? You're heading into something you don't know, for guys you haven't seen for months, with a woman you only just met and know nothing about, asides from the fact that she happens to be very attractive?
Spunkmeyer grimaced; his libido had been making similar remarks ever since he'd first opened his door to find Ruin standing there.
Yeah, and that's another thing, genius. You don't even know her name. You don't know anything, in fact, other than she was supposedly hired by Hicks and/or Hudson to do some kind of crazy rescue mission.
Someone banged on his door, hard.
Okay. That's probably her, wanting to know what's keeping you. So open the door and tell her the deal's off.
Spunkmeyer crossed into the hall, then hesitated.
And what about what she promised me?
No reply. The dropship crew chief grimaced. Just when it might be useful, the inner voice had nothing to say.
Alright. She was probably bluffing anyway. So...yeah. Open the door, tell her to forget it.
Spunkmeyer nodded slightly. It was for the best, really.
Actually...did he even have to open the door to her? Maybe he could just ignore it, let her get the message that way.
He hesitated. He knew he was being a coward, even despised himself for it, but sometimes things just worked out that way. Ruin could find another pilot. Matter resolved, Spunkmeyer turned to go back into the living room.
He'd got as far as taking the first step when his front door was abruptly kicked in, in a manner which not only opened it but pretty much destroyed its chances of ever being closed again. Two heavy-set men strode through the wreckage, one kicking a piece of timber aside so hard it left a scratch on the wall.
Spunkmeyer tensed slightly. They were armed as well; one was carrying a claw-hammer, the other a baseball bat. He didn't think they were any real threat, but he tried to keep his training in the past, where it belonged.
"I'm guessing you're not salesmen." It was a ridiculously obvious piece of bravado, but sometimes if you played the game a certain way, it was possible to cheat.
Bat-Boy snorted. "They said you were smart. Let's see how smart you really are."
Spunkmeyer raised his eyebrows. "What, is this some sorta test?"
The pair exchanged glances.
"Yeah," Claw-Hammer said at last, "yeah. You pass, you get to keep your life. If you fail..." He hefted his weapon, smirking. "Well, let's break that bridge when we come to it."
"Right." Spunkmeyer shifted his weight, an action which looked like anything someone in his situation would do. In this case, however, it enabled him to move very slightly in preparation for trouble. "So who are you working for, and what do they want?"
Bat-Boy swung his own weapon in a wild flourish, a movement which was supposed to be intimidating and one that was only slightly spoiled by the fact that his companion had to duck out the way of his enthusiasm.
"Listen, kid, we're asking the questions here!"
"Right," Spunkmeyer said again. He had the measure of them now; little more than brainless thugs. Dangerous enough if they got close to you, but not likely to pose a serious problem. "So how the fuck am I supposed to find out what you want from me if I can't even ask you about it?"
"I told you we'd ask the questions!" This time the bat swung through the air so fast it crashed through the plaster.
Spunkmeyer stared at Claw-Hammer. "Is your buddy okay? I mean..." He tapped the side of his head with a forefinger.
Claw-Hammer shrugged, somewhat abashed.
"It's his first day on the job," he said, while Bat-Boy tried in vain to tug his precious baseball bat out of the wall. "He's seen one too many movies. Thinks all marks run screaming at the sight of us. Don't mind him."
Spunkmeyer raised his eyebrows. "Okay. I'll mind you instead. What do you want?"
"You recently accepted an offer from a certain woman, didn't you?"
The dropship crew chief blinked.
"Yeah, I did, and I don't wanna know how the fuck you found that out so quickly. What's that to you?"
Claw-Hammer shook his head, smirking.
"Listen to me, Danny boy, unless you agree to cancel your little arrangement with that young woman, you will soon be looking for your feet down your throat. Do you understand?"
"Yeah." Spunkmeyer understood only too well, and almost laughed out loud. Looking for your feet down your throat? Christ, did they teach lines like that in terrorism school?
"Then you'll dissolve the contract?"
Spunkmeyer squared his shoulders very slightly.
"No."
There was a slightly puzzled silence, broken only by Bat-Boy's wrenching his bat out in a triumphant shower of plaster.
"Is it cash?" Claw-Hammer said. "Because whatever she offered you, we can double it. Triple it."
Spunkmeyer shook his head. Although he'd fully intended to dissolve the contract, as Claw-Hammer put it, this had got a little too interesting. Besides, he hadn't got where he was by following society's rules.
"Forget it. It's nothing to do with money. I doubt even the fucking Company would have enough to buy off this contract."
Claw-Hammer's smirk widened. "Name your price, Danny boy. I guarantee it'll be met."
Spunkmeyer raised his eyebrows, smiling. "Tempting offer, I guess, but you're really not my type."
"Okay, we offered, he refused." Bat-Boy advanced. "Now let's just break some bones and go home."
Spunkmeyer waited until he was within range, then kicked out hard and felt bone crunch under his foot. Bat-Boy let out a high, bubbling shriek that went through all their heads like fingernails on a chalkboard, and dropped to the ground, clutching his knee and howling.
The dropship crew chief glanced at Claw-Hammer and raised his eyebrows.
"You next?"
Claw-Hammer seemed to hesitate for the barest fraction of a second, then stepped towards him. Spunkmeyer waited. This guy was smarter than his friend - although that wasn't hard - and more experienced. He doubted the man would fall into the same trap as Bat-Boy.
There was a sensation of blurred movement followed by a sound very similar to someone hitting a slab of meat, and Claw-Hammer literally flew through the air to crash into the wall.
Ruin stepped delicately into the hall, kicking Bat-Boy hard in his unhurt leg as she did so, and nodded calmly to Spunkmeyer, who was staring with his mouth open. The first thought that went through his head was that Ruin was much faster than any human had a right to be. The second could loosely be translated as where the hell did she come from?. He knew damn well he hadn't seen her before she struck.
Ruin stood, waiting. Although she wasn't in any classic combat pose, her very attitude suggested a challenge.
Whatever it was, it was one that Claw-Hammer wasn't stupid enough to take up. Hauling his still bawling friend upright, he backed off, accidentally jarring Bat-Boy's leg and cringing as the shrieks climbed a full octave.
Claw-Hammer glanced at Ruin, a pained expression on his face, and held Bat-Boy towards her.
"Would you mind...?"
Ruin shrugged, then stepped forward and brought one hand across in a backhand blow that connected squarely with Bat-Boy's temple. He blinked at her owlishly for a few minutes, then went completely limp.
"You could've done that," Spunkmeyer said, eyeing Claw-Hammer suspiciously. The older man snorted.
"Yeah? Try explaining that to the fucking union." He paused in the doorway and nodded to Ruin. "Nothing personal, ma'am. Just doing my job."
Ruin shrugged again.
"I know the feeling. Give us a day or so and you won't have to do it again, at least, not here."
For a moment Claw-Hammer looked sorely tempted, then he just grunted and hauled his unconscious partner out the door.
There was a long silence.
"That was pretty amazing," Spunkmeyer said eventually.
"Thank you." Ruin considered. "Maybe I should have mentioned this earlier. The Company's not gonna be happy to see me, not when they realise what I plan on doing."
"Fuck the Company," Spunkmeyer said succinctly.
Ruin smirked.
"Yeah. But I think we better leave. Like, right now."
"Where are we going, anyway?"
"Gateway. Think you can find it?"
Spunkmeyer gave her a long, old-fashioned look.
"A fucking blind man could find it. Gateway likes to encourage visitors, so long as they have enough cash."
"Good. I managed to get an apartment there. It's not in the same league as yours, but it's something."
Spunkmeyer raised an eyebrow. "How'd you manage that?"
"Never mind that now. Come on; I'm double-parked and I want to get out of here before I get a ticket."
"Here?" Spunkmeyer snorted. "Hardly. In this district all you need to do is show your licence and they'll let you off with a warning."
"Yeah." Ruin led the way out to where a truck was still idling by the kerb. "But that does rather depend on my having a licence in the first place, doesn't it?"
Spunkmeyer hesitated. "Yeah...right." He glanced at the truck. "I guess you're not gonna let me drive, right?"
"Good guess." Ruin opened the door and pulled herself up neatly into the driver's seat. Somewhat apprehensively, Spunkmeyer got in the other side.
"Are you sure I can't drive?" he persisted. Traffic around the shuttle depot was murder at the best of times.
"I don't know whether you can drive or not," Ruin informed him caustically as she shifted into gear and pulled away. "I just know that you're not driving this thing."
Spunkmeyer relapsed into a silence that verged somewhere between nervous and seriously pissed off, and Ruin took advantage of this to start thinking long and hard about things.
So you recruit one of the Acheron survivors into being your pilot, and a couple of hours later, someone comes along and tries to beat the shit out of him. Coincidence? I think not.
She tightened her lips almost imperceptibly.
So who told them? The Elite? They get into everything sooner or later, but crass intimidation isn't their style. And besides, you're a long, long way from home; too far for them to bother with you.
"Did you recognise those guys?" she said suddenly.
Spunkmeyer shrugged.
"Not really. One of 'em reminded me of a guy I knew when I was a kid, but I wouldn't put it any stronger than that."
Ruin frowned. "Would this guy, by any chance, have anything against you?"
"Not enough to hit me with a claw hammer." Spunkmeyer hesitated. "Look, about our deal-"
"Not thinking of backing out, are you?"
"What? Fuck, no! But I have to know...were you serious?"
Ruin rolled her eyes. Spunkmeyer had been asking her that every ten minutes since they'd left.
"Yes. I am deadly serious. People where I come from rarely make jokes." She paused. "And anyway, the little fact that I was able to pinpoint exactly what you want must count for something."
The blinking of brake lights up ahead heralded the start of the queue for the shuttle depot, which was barely visible as a small dark blob on the horizon.
"I suppose you've managed to get hold of a ship as well," Spunkmeyer said with biting sarcasm.
"Would I have got you to come along if I hadn't?" Ruin said candidly.
The dropship crew chief frowned at her.
"Yeah. I was meaning to ask about that. What made you decide to come back at exactly that moment in time?"
Ruin shrugged.
"I'd pulled in to pick up petrol at pretty much the same time as those guys. I heard them talking, heard your name and made tracks as fast as I could." She paused. "Not to mention the fact I was worried you might be having second thoughts."
"So you just happened to overhear these guys?" Spunkmeyer said sceptically, ignoring the comment about 'second thoughts', at least for the minute. "Some coincidence."
"I know. I have this tendency to hit the long shots. It's my curse." Ruin leaned forward onto the dashboard, arms folded. "You might as well get some sleep. We'll be lucky to make the depot before midnight at this rate."
Newt's jaw fell open.
"What happened to you?"
"You fucking near got your wish," Vasquez answered coldly. It had taken over an hour for her to find the way back to her sector, followed by a further two hours of skulking around and waiting before she and Gorman had been able to actually get inside. Both her ankle and her shoulder were throbbing angrily now, the latter having soaked the bandage scarlet and continued to trickle down her arm.
"What?" For a minute, Newt didn't understand what the smartgun operator meant, then it clicked and the blood left her face. "Vaz, I-I didn't mean it!"
"Tell the bugs that, why don't you?" Vasquez said flatly.
She hadn't thought it was possible for someone to go any whiter, but somehow Newt managed it.
"They're...here?"
"Yeah. They were here before they ever reached you, kid. The fucking Company's breeding them. Christ knows where they got the eggs from, but they're here now. And how long do you think it'll take before they lose control and this place gets overrun?"
Newt stared at her wordlessly.
"But...they couldn't get in here, could they? Could they?" she repeated desperately, when Vasquez didn't answer right away.
The smartgun operator whirled. Most people, when they've had a recent scare, tend to try and find something to take their mind off it. Vasquez preferred to spread it around, and Newt was a prime target.
"Of course they fucking could! Didn't you learn anything from Acheron? If they want to get into a place, they'll get in! And if we couldn't stop them, I really don't think some little boys with big guns stand much of a chance, do you?"
"They'll have to get loose first," Gorman said calmly, stepping around Vasquez when it became clear the woman wasn't going to move out of his way. "Leave her alone, Vasquez; scaring her's not going to do any good." He nodded to Newt, then dropped into the room's only armchair. It was that or collapse.
Vasquez whirled.
"Look! I said you could stay - I seem to be running a fucking hostel here, so you might as well get in on the action - but that doesn't mean I'm taking orders from you again!"
"No?" Gorman's tone was flat. "How about advice, then? Keep your goddamned mouth shut for the minute, because in case you've forgotten, you're not the only one who's suffered with these bastards."
Vasquez took a deep breath, which she expelled in a sigh. She'd been convinced that even if the Company had its head up its multimillion dollar ass, the aliens had been destroyed when Acheron went up. She'd even allowed herself to hope that she'd never have to see another bug as long as she lived. Now, not only was she wrong, but the chances were good that she'd be catapulted back into the fray before too long.
Fucking great. Now I know how Ripley felt.
Vasquez was surprised to find herself actually feeling sorry for Ripley. The woman had survived two separate encounters with aliens, managed to save half the Marines when Gorman's brain had apparently shut down, and after all that she'd still died.
The lieutenant was absolutely right about one thing, Vasquez thought, glancing over to where Gorman was already half asleep in the armchair. Far from being over, it was very possible that their problems were only just beginning.
Gateway:
It wasn't what Ruin had expected, although she made a mental note that 'space station' was the equivalent of 'starport'. That made things a little easier; she knew how ports were organised.
Now, if I wanted to keep a kid locked up, where would I put her?
The barracks? It was a tempting thought, Ruin admitted, but all Newt would have to do was drop a few names and the Marines would probably let her through. Of course, there was a definite distinction between probably and certainly, but it wasn't worth taking the risk. And you wouldn't want the kid anywhere near the station hangars either; it'd be too easy for her to stow away. In fact, if Hicks was right and Newt had actually been abducted, you wouldn't want her anywhere near anyone else, either.
Ruin groaned; her head was starting to hurt.
So...what? Find the least populated area? That was near impossible on starports - no, Ruin corrected herself, space stations - but maybe it was worth a try.
She glanced over at Spunkmeyer, who was dozing in the only chair. Neither of them had stopped to sleep since leaving New Charlottetown, and Ruin supposed that flying a shuttle for seventeen hours really did take it out of you. But still...she needed answers, and Spunkmeyer must know more about this place and the ways of its people than she did.
"Dan?"
"Hm?" Spunkmeyer jerked awake, rubbing his eyes. "Time to go already?"
"Not even close." Ruin hesitated, not sure how to phrase this next part. "If they had a homeless person here, where would they put them?"
Spunkmeyer blinked.
"There aren't any. People on Gateway are assigned apartments and those who fail to maintain them or pay for them get kicked off the station."
"Children, then," Ruin amended. "Say a child lost both parents on Gateway and they didn't have any other relatives. What would happen to them?"
Spunkmeyer shifted and reached out to pour himself another mug of coffee.
"I guess they'd put 'em in the nearest care home. Why?"
"I'm looking for Hicks' kid, of course. Why do you think?"
The mug hit the floor with a crash.
"You're what?"
Ruin gave him a faintly puzzled look. "I told you back in your apartment, remember?"
Spunkmeyer shrugged. He didn't remember much of what Ruin had said after they'd made their bargain.
"You're looking for...what's her name? Newt?"
"Yeah. That's why Hudson sent me to you. I guess he wanted to keep it among the survivors. Actually, so did I, if it comes to that."
Spunkmeyer froze in the middle of clearing up the shattered crockery.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he said warily.
"You know what it means, Dan; don't play games with me." Ruin frowned, trying to work out how this latest development was likely to affect her.
"Survivors of what?" Spunkmeyer said obstinately. Ruin glanced at him.
"Alright then, play games if you want. It really doesn't matter to me either way. Let's say I wanted to use people she'd met before, if that makes it easier for you to handle."
It didn't, but Spunkmeyer was wise enough to Ruin by now not to ask questions. Instead, he sat down at the breakfast bar with a sour expression.
"Shit, if I'd known I was going to end up in another apartment, I'd have at least brought some movies along."
"You're not telling me you can't afford to buy others," Ruin said acerbically. "You're on what? Five thousand a month? And I don't want to know how you wangled that one, although I can make a fair guess."
"You could've told me it was going to be a long job."
"To be honest, Dan, I don't know how long it'll be. I want this place so I can take as long as I need."
Spunkmeyer shrugged, raising both hands in surrender.
"Okay. You're the boss. So what now? We can't do this by ourselves. Do we get backup?"
"You know better than that," Ruin said calmly. "The average person doesn't believe in helping complete strangers." She paused. "But you're right. We're going to need backup, and strong backup at that."
Spunkmeyer snorted.
"Fat fucking chance."
"You know better than that as well."
"Yeah. Right. And just what did you have in mind?"
Ruin took a deep breath.
"We make a deal, and not two hours later someone sends two guys round to tell you to break it? How did they find out? More importantly, who sent them?" She shook her head. "Someone doesn't want us interfering. Maybe it has to do with that mission; I don't know."
"Right. So how're you gonna find these people?"
The germ of an idea started to grow in Ruin's mind.
"I'm not. If all goes well, they'll come to us." She snatched a piece of paper and a pen and scrawled out a rough advert.
"How about this? Missing; one blonde, blue-eyed six year old, name Rebecca Jorden, answers to Newt. Last seen in and around the Gateway hangar area. If found, please contact Dwayne Hicks, apartment 304, corridor 9, Gateway Station."
Spunkmeyer shrugged.
"It's as good as any, I guess. Except what are you going to say when someone turns up asking for Hicks and you answer the door?"
"That very much depends on who's doing the asking," Ruin answered bluntly. "But chances are good that if the kid is here, whoever has her is likely to want it hushed up. They'll come. Trust me on that one, Dan. They'll come."
"Vaz. Vaz."
Vasquez opened her eyes blearily and stared at Newt.
"What the fuck do you have against someone getting a good long sleep?" she grated.
"It wasn't good," Newt said composedly, "'cause you were moaning and stuff. Vaz, it's Gorman."
Vasquez closed her eyes again, praying to a god she didn't believe in for patience she knew she'd never have.
"If you want me to move him off the couch just so you can watch your cartoons, you're gonna be out of luck, kid. Move him yourself."
"I...I think he's dead."
Vasquez sat bolt upright.
"What? What do you mean?"
"He's all white and he's not moving and...and I can't see if he's breathing." Newt caught hold of Vasquez' hand and tugged. "Vaz, please come and look at him."
Vasquez jerked her hand out of the child's grasp irritably.
"If this is some kind of practical joke, or if I find he's just sleeping deeply, you know what I'll do, don't you?"
"Uh..." Newt considered. "Get really mad?"
"Oh yeah. And that's just for starters." The smartgun operator rolled onto her feet and followed her housemate somewhat groggily into the living room.
Newt hadn't been exaggerating; Gorman was frighteningly pale and his breathing was so shallow Vasquez could understand how Newt had worried that it had stopped completely. Reaching out, the smartgun operator rolled Gorman over, none too gently. Blood caked the man's back, sticking the fabric of his shirt to the skin. There was also a sizeable red stain on the couch that Vasquez knew hadn't been there previously.
"Is he dead?" Newt said plaintively.
Vasquez rested two fingers in the man's throat.
"No. I don't think so. There's a pulse, but it's faint; shit, I don't know if it's there or just my imagination."
"I read somewhere that they used to cut the wrists on a body to see if the person was still alive or not," Newt offered helpfully.
"Don't you think he's lost enough blood already?" Vasquez retorted. She took hold of Gorman's shirt and ripped it off his body with a tearing sound that made Newt wince. On the couch, the lieutenant didn't even stir.
Vasquez stared down at the vicious, criss-crossing lacerations which covered almost every square inch of Gorman's back, for once at a loss for words.
"Wow." Newt came to stand next to Vasquez, eyes wide. "What happened to him?"
The smartgun operator shook her head.
"No idea."
They stood in silence for a minute or so longer.
"It's like..." Vasquez began, then stopped. Newt filled in the rest of the sentence.
"It's like someone beat him with something." She studied the depth of the injuries and added, "Beat him really, really hard."
"That's-" Vasquez began again, then she broke off, frowning. "You're right, it is."
"Do soldiers hit other soldiers?"
Memories of several fights she and Drake had been involved in flashed through the smartgun operator's mind in the blink of an eye, and she shook her head.
"Not like this. They're tough, but they're not torturers." Vasquez considered this. "At least, not for their own. The Company's another matter, though; they don't care what side you're on if you have something they want." She hesitated. That much at least was true, but...torture? If they were really that ruthless and determined, then the odds had just got a lot higher than she liked to play them.
First things first. One, stop this guy from dying. Two, deal with everything else.
"Get me a sheet. Now," Vasquez said sharply, when Newt didn't move.
The girl spun and darted back into her bedroom, returning a few minutes later with arms full of linen. The smartgun operator snatched it from her and ripped it into pieces as best she could, then handed them to Newt with a curt, "Hold these." As the girl took them, somewhat nonplussed, Vasquez grabbed Gorman under the arms and hauled him upright, propping him in a sitting position before grabbing the crude bandages back from Newt and starting to wrap them around the lieutenant's torso.
Something caught her eye and she hesitated, the half-wound bandage still in one hand. She hadn't noticed it earlier; the bagginess of the shirt had concealed it and they'd both had more important things on their minds. Looking down on him now though, she could see that the lieutenant was painfully thin, to the point of emaciation.
Vasquez shook her head, feeling a grudging respect for the man. He'd come this far, half starved and on the verge of bleeding to death and never said a word. On the positive side, the red blood meant that it really was Gorman, not some android sent in to trick her.
On the negative side, Vasquez seriously doubted that he'd survive the night.
"I've been thinking about something," Hicks said the next morning, as soon as Hudson was awake enough to hold a coherent conversation.
"Again?" Hudson mumbled, his voice barely audible. There had been a party last night, and he'd gotten seriously drunk with most of the guests. He was currently face down on one of the tables; it had been easier to go to sleep there than try and haul himself upstairs to bed, particularly when the walls and floor kept swirling around.
"Yes, again. I want to talk to you about Ruin."
Hudson groaned, a reaction that wasn't entirely due to the hangover.
"Again?" he repeated. "Fuck's sake, Dwayne, what now?" He stuck out a hand and felt around on the table experimentally.
"She said a lot of things while we were talking."
"That's the point of a conversation," Hudson said irritably; Hicks' obsession with Ruin was really starting to get on his nerves. "Could you grab me a couple eggs and some tomato juice out the fridge?"
"Way ahead of you." There was a light tap as Hicks placed the items on the table. Hudson reached out, fumbling until his hand located the eggs, then he broke them into the dirty glass in front of him, poured in a generous amount of juice and swallowed the mixture, shuddering.
"Okay. Tell me. And please keep your voice down; my fucking head feels like it's about to drop off."
Hicks dragged a chair over, causing the comtech to cringe at the noise, and sat down opposite him.
"I think she's a colonist."
"Who isn't these days?" Hudson finished his hangover cure and opened grainy eyes. "You have any idea how expensive it is to live in the so-called settled planets?"
"Acheron."
"'Scuse me?"
Hicks suppressed a sigh and, with considerably more difficulty, an urge to whack the comtech upside the head.
"I'm saying I think Ruin was a colonist from Acheron."
Hudson stared, then a slow grin spread across his face.
"What?" Hicks said sharply. "It makes complete sense."
"Yeah? I'll tell you something else makes complete sense, Dwayne; you had a little too much booze last night."
Hicks glared at him. "No thanks. I learned my lesson the hard way about that shit." He shook his head. "Look, Ruin knew my last name and I'm damn sure none of you told her what it was. Does she ever talk about where she came from?"
Hudson struggled to remember. "Well...no. Not often, anyway."
"Right, which means she might well be an illegal immigrant here. Colonists aren't allowed to just leave as and when they please; they're assigned to new positions just like we are." Hicks paused. "Then there's the little matter of what I saw in her hideout that time."
"Which was?"
"Do you remember that doll Newt always used to carry?"
Hudson tried to think. "Yeah...that head. What about it?"
"It was there," Hicks said quietly. "In Ruin's hideout. But that thing sank into the lower levels of Acheron; I saw it myself."
The comtech rolled his eyes. "Lotsa people carry decapitated dolls."
Hicks shot him a withering look. "Name three."
Hudson looked up at Hicks, or at least at the Hicks that seemed to stay in focus for the longest. The three that were still moving from side to side were probably safe to ignore.
"Dwayne, what you're suggesting...that would have given her about half an hour to get down there, retrieve that doll's head and get back to wherever her ship was -- which, incidentally, she told me she couldn't fly -- and that ain't counting the bugs."
Hicks refused to look away. "Half an hour's plenty of time. Ripley did it in less than that."
"Ripley probably didn't have to trek halfway across the goddamned planet!" Hudson shot back acidly. "Unlike Ruin 'cause if her ship was anywhere, it'd be out of range of our scanners since we never found it."
"Did we ever scan for it?"
The comtech gave him a look that was surprisingly withering for a man suffering from the great-grandmother of all hangovers.
"You don't think Bishop would have flown straight past a strange ship without mentioning it, do you?"
"You don't get it, Will. Ruin's place was like a plant version of Acheron, and she must have gone to some trouble to replicate the stink -- why, Christ only knows -- but it's a pretty fair semblance. She never talks about where she came from, but she knows my name, your name, Cyn's name and Newt's. How could she know all that? How, unless she was there at the time?"
Hudson took a deep breath.
"Okay. First of all, she knew mine and Cyn's names 'cause we introduced ourselves to her, both names. So that puts a hole in your theory right from the start. Second, we probably mentioned your name and Newt's too if it comes to that. Fuck knows we told everyone else when we found out you were coming. Third, if she was a colonist, she'd have had a PDT, and we'd have picked her up on the screen."
"Would we?" Hicks refused to give in. "I seem to remember it took you a pretty long time to track down the rest of them. Neither of us bothered to count, to see if they were all accounted for. It's more than possible Ruin was hiding somewhere else."
"Where?"
"I don't know, do I?" Hicks shook his head. "I think she knows about the aliens. I think she knows a hell of a lot more about them than we do."
"Well, that ain't hard," Hudson muttered. Hicks continued, ignoring him.
"I can't help wondering if she had something to do with the whole thing. Maybe she had something to do with that ship. Maybe she brought the aliens as some kind of bioweapon to wage war or something." He shook his head. "Why the hell did you have to let her in here?"
There was a silence, then Hudson spoke in a tone of utmost reason.
"Dwayne, I am not going to ban Ruin on the grounds that she might be a megalomaniac trying to take over the universe with a hostile alien race."
Hicks glanced at him, then managed a grin. "Yeah. I guess it does sound a little far-fetched."
"Oh yeah," the comtech said fervently. "You've only spoken to her for a couple hours, but in your mind she's already destroyed the colony by arriving in a ship -- which also happens to be a good few centuries old! -- watched the others die down there and then abducted Newt's doll. Never mind the little fact that she's currently doing everything in her power to find Newt."
Hicks frowned slightly. "Yeah, and doesn't that strike you as odd?"
Hudson rolled his eyes.
"Jesus, Dwayne, have a day off! If you mean, does it strike me as odd that you asked what amounted to a perfect stranger to scour the galaxy for your kid, then yes it does! Almost as odd as the fact that she agreed. Ruin is not going to kill Newt, and if she finds her I guarantee she'll bring her back here. Now can we change the--"
He cringed suddenly, covering his ears as a high-pitched caterwauling reached them from upstairs and sinking practically under the table as Dietrich emerged singing one of Tirand's most popular drinking songs. Her singing voice verged on the painful at the best of times, Hicks thought, never mind when you were hung over.
"There's a pistol out back," Hudson muttered. "You wanna grab it and do me a favour, Dwayne?"
Hicks quirked an eyebrow at him. "You or her?"
"Surprise me," the comtech said tonelessly.
There was a blessed silence as Dietrich fumbled over the words of verse six, followed by her deciding to repeat verse five and the chorus for good measure. Eventually Hudson picked up his glass and hurled it overarm at the medtech. Dietrich ducked, and the glass hit the wall behind and shattered.
"What the fuck was that for?" the medtech demanded indignantly.
"Just shut it, okay?" Hudson said dully. "My head is fucking killing me."
Dietrich rolled her eyes. "Yeah? Well, that's what you get when you don't know when to stop. Shit, Will; even Dwayne don't get pissed like you did."
"I don't get pissed at all," Hicks retorted. Honesty and a treacherously good memory forced him to add, "well, not often anyway."
"That's what you said when you first arrived," Dietrich shot back, not missing a beat.
Hudson groaned aloud. "Dwayne, please knock one of us out. Or go back to what we were talking about; even that's gotta be better than listening to Cyn bitch."
"What?" Her interest momentarily diverted, Dietrich glanced from one man to the other. "What were you talking about?"
"Acheron," Hicks said tonelessly. For some reason, he didn't feel like going into his theories about Ruin again, not least because the next glass Hudson found would probably come for his head.
Dietrich shook her head disbelievingly. "Who the fuck wants to talk about Acheron? Nothing but rocks, rust and rain. Man, who'd grow up in a place like that?"
"I did," Hicks said very quietly.
There was a surprised silence.
"'Scuse me?" Hudson said at the end of it.
Hicks glanced at him. There was no real expression on his face, but the comtech still found it hard to meet those clear green eyes. "I was a colony brat. I enlisted in the USCM when I was sixteen."
"Yeah man, but that colony wasn't Acheron, was it?"
There was another silence and Hudson sank down onto an empty chair.
"It...was. Jesus, man, how the fuck do you live with something like that?"
In an odd sort of way, it made sense, though. Hudson remembered how Hicks had seemed to know his way around the colony even without the maps, how he'd been yelling in the reactor about going down one tunnel as opposed to the other. They'd taken that for granted at the time; not one of them had stopped to wonder about how he'd been so familiar with their surroundings.
Hudson continued staring, wordless.
"You...yeah, but your family, man; they got out okay, right? Right? I mean, families move all the time. They must've left Acheron before the shit hit the fan, right?"
Hicks didn't answer. That in itself was answer enough.
"You..." For once, the comtech was speechless.
"Good thing the whole place went up, then," Dietrich said matter-of-factly. "At least it'd be quicker than death by facehugger...unless they'd already had that, of course."
Hicks genuinely didn't believe that she meant this maliciously, but he'd just poured himself a mug of steaming coffee and he could have quite happily dashed it in her face.
"You really are a fucking grade-A superbitch, aren't you?" Hudson said to the medtech, recovering his voice with what looked like a supreme effort and looking at her with something very much like loathing. Dietrich held up her hands defensively.
"Oh, come on; like you weren't thinking it!"
"Just..." Hudson fumbled for words, eventually settling on, "Just shut up and get the bar open, okay?"
Dietrich glowered at him. "Me? Why do I always have to do it? Why don't you pull your own weight once in a while?"
"Because my head feels like it's gonna fucking explode."
"Shouldn'ta got drunk then, should you?" the medtech returned smartly, not missing a beat.
"Forget it; I'll do it." Hicks got to his feet. Their constant bickering was starting to give him a headache of his own, and he found himself wondering for the first time how the hell Hudson and Dietrich had wound up going into business together.
More's to the point, what was he supposed to do? Following Ruin held a certain appeal, he had to admit, but it also lacked any semblance of good sense.
Hicks sighed. Maybe Hudson was right. Maybe he had been overdoing it a little recently. Maybe there was nothing to really worry about. He doubted it, but maybe.
"Vaz? Tell me a story," Newt said plaintively.
"Shut up, you little shit," Vasquez grated under her breath. What had she ever done to deserve this?
The smartgun operator thought about it for a few minutes and then started thinking about what she hadn't done instead. That was much easier, and there was the added bonus that she'd probably be finished before lunch. Hell, she'd almost prefer a facehugger to spending the rest of her life with a six year old girl in this place, and it didn't help much to think that in either case, the rest of her life probably wasn't going to be that long.
In fairness, it wasn't just Newt that was causing her bad mood. Vasquez had been up all night working on Gorman, finally falling asleep at around four in the morning when the lieutenant had seemed to regain some of his colour. The alarm clock had woken the smartgun operator up two hours later, before being hurled into the wall, and it was only Newt's quick reflexes and instinct for trouble that had probably saved her from the same fate.
Still, Gorman had seemed a little better. At least now there could be no doubt that he was still alive.
"Is he gonna be okay?" Newt asked, clambering up to kneel on the arm of the couch.
"How the fuck should I know?"
The girl's tone was eminently reasonable as she answered, "Well, you were the one helping him."
Vasquez took a deep breath, fighting to keep a hold on her temper. It wasn't Newt's fault Gorman had showed up, and Vasquez herself was happier and more relieved to see him than she'd let on. He'd saved her life, after all.
He'd...The smartgun operator frowned slightly. Even Drake might well have balked at going up against a queen alien with nothing more than a pistol. Yet Gorman had gone in without even thinking about it. Actually, acting without thinking seemed to be very much in his line. Still...if he'd had the chance to get over his pitiful dependence on regs, and the naïve belief that everyone would follow them regardless, Vasquez supposed that Gorman would probably have made one hell of an officer.
Not much chance of that now though, even if we do manage to get out of here. I think he's officially dead, as far as the records go.
The smartgun operator shook her head. She hadn't survived as long as she had by ignoring her instincts, and right now they were telling her to get out, and fast.
And to do that, I'll need to get the lieutenant fixed up asap. Which means... Vasquez let out an irritated sigh. Shit.
Reaching down, she grabbed the pulse rifle and hefted it easily; enjoying the feeling of security the weapon gave her, and then glanced at Newt.
"If he wakes up, tell him I'll be back by seven."
Newt stared at her. "You're going out again? After what happened last time?"
"I'm not going back in that room," Vasquez said dismissively, as though that settled the matter. "I'm just gonna...get one or two things. I need more medical supplies." She glanced at Gorman. "That dickhead needs more than we have."
"That dickhead saved your life," Newt pointed out smartly, not missing a beat. The smartgun operator glared at her, torn between anger and amusement.
"And that is the only reason I let him anywhere near here. I pay my debts. That's all." Vasquez shook her head. "I told you, I'm not going to go back into that hellhole. I'm just gonna borrow a few things, that's all."
"Borrow?" Newt echoed.
"Yeah."
"So...when you're done with them, you're gonna give 'em back?"
"Don't fucking split hairs with me, kid." Vasquez glanced down at the pulse rifle. A full clip, minus grenades. It would have to be enough.
"Vaz, c'n I ask you something?"
"You just did."
"If you aren't going back to those things, why're you taking the gun along? 'Cause it's only gonna attract attention."
The smartgun operator hesitated. That was a damn good question, although she wasn't about to let Newt know that. "Because I think it could be useful, that's why," she said instead. "Why? You got a better idea?"
"No, but at least I didn't come up with a worse one either."
Ouch. Vasquez almost grinned, caught it just in time. That was a good one. She'd have to remember it. "What's your problem, anyway?" she demanded. "I'm just gonna go through to medlab, grab a few things and come back."
Newt bit her lip. "I don't wanna stay here."
Vasquez shrugged. "So don't. I ain't exactly holding you prisoner here, kid, in case you hadn't realised. You know where the door is; go squat with Charmaine or someone."
The girl squirmed, tracing patterns on the floor with a toe. "I jus'...I don't wanna be alone in this place."
"You're not alone," Vasquez told her unsympathetically. "You've got the lieutenant."
Newt glowered at the smartgun operator. "What's he gonna do if someone comes over, snore at them?"
Vasquez felt another grin threatening to spread itself over her face, suppressed it with a supreme effort. "You ain't coming, kid, and that's final. I want to get this done quickly and smoothly, not have to worry about babysitting."
"I'm not a baby!"
"Then don't fucking act like one!" the smartgun operator shot back.
"I could be useful. I could help you carry the stuff."
Vasquez raised a scornful eyebrow. "You think I need your help?"
"You needed it on Acheron!"
There was a short pause, then the smartgun operator said grumpily, "Alright, so that's one for you."
Newt brightened. "Does that mean I can come?"
"No. Someone has to watch over Gorman."
Newt rolled her eyes exasperatedly. "Yeah, Vaz, like that's gonna work! What'm I gonna do if something goes wrong?"
Vasquez, who was already in the doorway, shrugged. "Do what you always do, kid. Find a nice airduct to hide in and wait for someone to come by."
"And what if something's hiding in my nice airduct?"
"Find another nice airduct," Vasquez tossed over her shoulder as she walked out the apartment, although that was a good point. She made a mental note to try and see about barring the airducts from the outside. Maybe that would shut Newt up.
The smartgun operator shook her head irritably.
Kids! Man, who the fuck'd have 'em? That had been one of the few things that she and her sisters had all agreed on; no children in any way, shape or form. Given the lifestyle of at least three of her sisters, and given the fact that two of them were still alive, Vasquez wouldn't have been at all surprised to learn that she was an aunt several times over, but she and the others had still been determined at the time.
Not that you fared much better, right Vaz? Even if you do get to palm her off on Hicks once you find him again -- and by the way, just how were you planning on accomplishing that little miracle? -- even if that happens, you're still stuck with that brat for the minute.
Vasquez glanced around. Charmaine had said something to her the other day that she'd stored in her memory for future reference.
"McDermott likes to squat in this place sometimes. He's got something going on with one of the women here; that's the main reason she ain't been vanished yet."
Vasquez had met the woman in question very briefly -- a glamourous fashion doll and a smartgun operator didn't usually have much to talk about -- and had managed to find out where she lived. It hadn't been too difficult either, the woman reflected as she headed towards the apartment in question. If what she'd heard was even half true, the place made her own spacious quarters look like a cell in the USCM. McDermott's 'favourite' enjoyed bragging about it as well.
Vasquez slowed to a stop outside the door, considered being circumspect just for the hell of it, then slammed her fist into it several times, again, just for the hell of it.
"McDermott!"
Silence, followed by the sound of someone getting reluctantly out of bed and hauling themselves across a room, swearing under their breath as they did so. In the temporary absence of anything to occupy it, Vasquez' mind started to wander.
Alright. So society's dregs are brought here and forgotten about, then vanished, as Char puts it.
The smartgun operator shifted her weight uneasily. Charmaine, who'd seen the aliens on file. Proof that the Company had known about Acheron...so where did that leave her and Newt? Gorman had started to tell her, while they'd been outside. And Newt...against her will, Vasquez' mind was dragged back to the girl's words, which had been going around and around in her head ever since they'd been spoken..
That thing they took out of you...maybe you could take your gun and get rid of it before it's too late.
Realisation and comprehension didn't dawn but exploded simultaneously, and Vasquez brought the gun up to her shoulder and chambered a round. When McDermott opened that door, he was going to get a big fucking surprise.
Go ahead, a little voice inside her whispered. Go ahead and kill him, if that's really what you want. But you better understand why you're doing it first; you're not doing it because you don't want the aliens to take over here, you're doing it because you've been lied to and tricked this whole time and it took a six year old kid to make you understand what should have been obvious right from the start; that facehugger hit. They froze you, brought you back and operated on you to take out the chestburster and since you're still alive, they succeeded.
And now they've got their very own bug hive. How long do you suppose it'll take for those things to get loose? You'd do better to save the ammo, first for the bugs and then for yourself.
Vasquez hesitated, then reluctantly shouldered the pulse rifle again and kicked the door hard, bursting it off its hinges. "Shit, man, what's the holdup?" she demanded.
McDermott, standing bleary-eyed and more asleep than awake in the bedroom door, somehow managed to find the energy to glare at her. "You! What do you think you're doing here?"
"Standing in your front hall at the minute," Vasquez answered with disarming frankness. "I came to see you for a very good reason. I need medical supplies. Powerful ones, for preference, and plenty of them."
"Does that have something to do with your unauthorised excursion yesterday?"
Vasquez yawned, not just for effect. McDermott wasn't the only one who was tired. "You'll have a lot of difficulty proving that."
"I'm posting guards at your door! You have violated the terms of your probation and--"
"Probation?!" Vasquez echoed incredulously. "What probation?"
"You had strict instructions not to leave your apartment! Since you seem incapable of following them, you leave me with no alternative but to--"
"You know what?" Vasquez said, leaning against the door. "You remind me of my old CO. Gorman, his name was. He used to talk a lot like that too. The only difference is that he was worth about six of you, and that's really not a distinction. Still, at least he meant well. Too bad you bastards killed him," she added. She wasn't sure if McDermott knew about her little sojourn into the outside world, but it couldn't hurt to let him think she still believed the lies.
"You heard me! Either you get back to your apartment this instant or--"
"Why?" Vasquez said, stretching up leisurely onto the tips of her toes before dropping down again. "What do you have hidden that you don't want me to see?" Besides the bug hive, asshole, she added in the privacy of her own mind.
"Enough!" McDermott shoved her back roughly, following her outside into the already fairly crowded corridor. "Either you get back to where you belong right now or I'll see you locked there for good!"
"You do what you think is best," Vasquez answered, her tone suspiciously demure. McDermott narrowed his eyes.
"I mean it! I'm going to count to three, and if you're not gone by then, I'll drag you back there myself if I have to!" He looked around at the other residents. "And what the fuck are you all staring at?"
"McDermott?" Vasquez said.
"What?"
The smartgun operator smiled sweetly at him. "I should get some clothes on first, if I were you."
"Dwayne, forget about it," Hudson said from the opposite side of the bar, where he was trying to lift the shades without exposing his over-sensitive eyes to the sun's glare. "You can't do anything besides wait."
"I'm sick of fucking waiting," Hicks shot back. "That's not why I came here."
Hudson muttered something under his breath, then turned to face the older man. "Look. You can't help Newt when you're dead. If Ruin's on our side -- which she is -- you can stay right here and let her do her job. If she's not and she wants you to follow so she can get hold of you as well as Newt, why play into her hands?"
Hicks shook his head. "I just don't like it, Will. I haven't lasted this long by ignoring my instincts, and right now they're telling me something stinks. And it ain't your fridge or Ruin's little nest either."
"Fine. Okay. Something stinks. In the meantime, we gotta get this place open asap. Ruin took a chunk of punters with her when she left." The comtech yanked the shades up, yelped as the light hit his eyes and stumbled backwards into a table. Hicks shook his head.
"Don't you ever get sick of getting drunk?"
"Yeah man, but not enough to go teetotal." Hudson risked opening his eyes the barest slit, wincing. "Ow! Oh fuck, that hurts!"
"Take a walk," Hicks said, then dropped into an atrocious impersonation of Hudson's voice. "Fresh air'll do you good."
"You're a fucking riot, Dwayne!" The comtech touched the side of his head gingerly. "Look...do me a favour, huh? Can you watch things for an hour or two? Just enough for me to crash?"
Hicks rolled his eyes. "Yeah, alright, I'll cover it. But you owe me." He paused. "What happened to that guy you always said you were gonna hire?"
"Hired him, fired him," Dietrich said dismissively from where she was leafing idly through a magazine. "And the two guys who came after him."
Hicks blinked. "What? Why?"
"He came onto me."
"That's it?"
The medtech glared at him. "What d'you mean, that's it? He wouldn't take no for an answer. He's just lucky it wasn't Vasquez he tried it on with; at least with me he got to walk away. Well, limp away."
Hicks rummaged around in the small fridge before extracting an opened carton of grapefruit juice and drinking straight from the slit, his thirst kicking into overdrive. Judging from the humidity of the air, it was going to be a scorcher on Tirand.
"So what happened to the second one?"
"Ah, he came onto me as well." Dietrich snorted. "Dickhead. Show me a guy who don't want to run his hands all over you and I'll show you a goddamned homo."
Hicks took another swallow of juice. "What about number three? He come onto you too?"
Dietrich snickered. "Nah; he came onto Will."
Hicks paused, then grinned. He'd have paid good money to see that. "So what're we expecting today?" he said, more to make conversation than anything. "Hundred? Hundred and ten?"
The medtech raised her eyebrows. "Creds or punters?" She shrugged. "Either way, we'll be lucky to break eighty. Say what you like about Ruin, Dwayne; she was responsible for a lot of our business."
The door clicked open quietly, and Hicks glanced at Dietrich. "Yeah? We're off to a good start, though." He frowned slightly as he caught sight of the person in the doorway. "Are you okay?"
Dietrich followed his gaze, puzzled, then got to her feet in alarm and crossed the floor with astonishing rapidity, catching hold of the stranger just before she hit the ground.
"What the..." Her voice tailed off for all of three seconds before coming back with a vengeance. "Holy shit! Dwayne!"
Something in that voice compelled Hicks; he was around the bar and at Dietrich's side in an instant, so fast even he wasn't sure how he'd done it.
"What? What is it?"
Dietrich nodded down. "See for yourself."
Hicks frowned. The woman in Dietrich's arms was in such an appalling state that for several minutes he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be looking at; the blood which had soaked most of her right side, the gaunt cheekbones, the tangled hair or the strange pallor of her skin.
Then he looked down, saw the grenade belt and promptly forgot about the rest.
"M40s." He swallowed hard and glanced up at Dietrich, who had suddenly gone very white. "Man, it's a good thing you caught her in time!"
The medtech swallowed. "Yeah. C'mon. Help me get her into one of the rooms; she needs medical attention and fast."
Hicks took the unconscious form from Dietrich somewhat gingerly -- he really didn't want to be too rough with someone who was wearing enough explosives to blow up an industrial factory -- and headed for the stairs. Pausing on the bottom step, he turned to Dietrich.
"Are you coming?"
"Yeah, just give me a minute," Dietrich said absently, already rummaging through her medical kit. "Go dump her on one of the beds." Remembering the grenade belt, she added, "gently!"
One of the doors opened as Hicks drew level with it and Hudson stuck his head out. "Hey man, can't you keep it down? I'm trying to suffer here." He caught sight of the girl in Hicks' arms and his eyebrows shot up. "Uh. Dwayne? I dunno how to break this to you, but this really ain't that kind of bar."
"You could've fooled me," Dietrich sniped from behind, making Hicks jump. "Don't do that! Shit, Dwayne; you wanna get us all killed?"
"What?" Hudson glanced from one to the other. "What's going on?"
"What's going on, Will, is that this person -- whoever the hell she is -- is wearing about thirty M40 grenades like a goddamn sash, and Dwayne almost dropped her! You wanna lay odds as to what happens when those things get a short, sharp shock like that?"
"Fuck!" The comtech stared. "I know I try not to make a habit of this, but I'm gonna have to agree with Cyn; treat her like the bomb she is."
"Who, her or Dietrich?" Hicks said, somewhat sourly. "Look, can I put her down somewhere or not; she's getting heavy!"
Dietrich and Hudson exchanged looks, then Hudson stepped back from the door. "Yeah, sure man; chuck her in here. Gently."
"Why the hell does everyone keep saying that to me?" Hicks demanded, his voice rising slightly. "I know what these things can do just as well as you do, if not better!"
Dietrich rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Dwayne, okay, whatever. Just put her down without blowing this place up."
Hicks, who was already inside Hudson's room, hesitated. "Uh. Isn't there another room we could use?"
"Hey man, what's wrong with my room?" the comtech demanded. Hicks turned clear eyes on him and the younger man squirmed slightly.
"You mean besides all the page three spreads and clothes on the floor?"
"Well...yeah!"
"Oh, for god's sake!" Dietrich pushed past, her arms full of medical gear. "It's fine! We just have to make sure that Will ain't the first person she sees when she wakes up." She dumped her load on the bedside table and nodded towards the bed. "Stick her on there."
"Great," Hicks heard Hudson mutter. "Now where the fuck am I supposed to sleep?"
"Think we give a shit?" Dietrich retorted, more interested in the small biomonitor she was wiring up than the comtech.
Hicks lowered the body onto the bed as gently as he could. "Can we get the grenades off without injuring her?"
Dietrich shrugged. "I don't think the belt's gonna catch on any broken bones, if that's what you're asking me." She half lifted the recumbent form into a sitting position. "Go ahead and try it."
Somewhat hesitantly, Hicks stretched out a hand towards the girl's shoulder, then stopped. "What's that?" He stared at the metal chain around the stranger's neck. "Dog tags?"
Dietrich reached down and lifted them up, frowning slightly.
"Well, yeah, but they're not from any military I've ever seen." She turned them over, reading the two words embossed there. "Is that an organisation or a gang or planet or what?" she wondered aloud.
Hicks was thinking the same thing. The tags looked genuine enough, though there was some kind of strange microchip on the back. He studied it curiously, then turned the tags over again. "'Raptor Atthiras'," he read aloud, then shook his head. "I'm with Cyn. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Maybe it's something she got just to look good."
"Uh." Hudson cleared his throat nervously. "I ain't looking to rain on anyone's parade here, but...is there something wrong with her?"
"You mean apart from the bleeding and unconsciousness?" Dietrich said sarcastically.
"Look at her, Cyn. She's fucking grey."
The medtech frowned. She supposed you could call the woman's skin grey if you were going to call it anything; a strange kind of brownish grey. "I dunno," she admitted. "I've never come across anything like this before."
"Oh man, what if they put a fucking quarantine in?" Hudson moaned. "That's all we need!"
"I won't tell them if you don't." Dietrich glanced at the monitor. "Vital signs are all good, though, or at least steady. Long's we keep her in one piece, she'll probably wake up in her own good time."
"Who is she?"
"How the fuck should I know?" the medtech demanded. "Unless she happens to blurt it out in her sleep, we're not gonna get any answers until she wakes up."
"She looks like a drifter," Hudson remarked, to no one in particular. Dietrich shook her head.
"I think she's too old. Late twenties at least, maybe older."
"Oh, so now there's an age limit?"
Dietrich opened her mouth for a stinging retort, caught Hicks' eye and shut it again rather hurriedly. "I'll know more once I can do a complete medical examination."
Hudson rubbed his sore head gingerly. "Right. So what's stopping you?"
"The little fact that in order to do that, I'm gonna have to strip her." Dietrich crossed to the window and pulled the shades down. "And I'm not doing that until you're both out the room, so take a hike!"
Grabbing hold of Hicks in one hand and Hudson in the other, the medtech shoved them both outside and shut the door firmly. In the corridor, the comtech shot Hicks a look.
"Man, I think I just got kicked out of my own bedroom!"
Hicks shook his head wryly. "That's medtechs for you, Will. Look on the bright side."
"What bright side?" Hudson said sulkily.
The older man clapped him on the shoulder with a grin that set Hudson's teeth on edge. "Well, if Cyn had been slightly slower off the mark, you and me and anyone in a five block radius would be no more than red vapour." He paused. "Of course, if she wakes up and remembers that she wanted to use those things, we may still end up as red vapour. You don't have any ex-girlfriends hanging around, do you?"
Hudson shot him an incredulous look. "Of course I fucking do, Dwayne! But I'm damn sure she ain't one of them."
Hicks shrugged. "Fine. Then there's nothing we can do except wait for her to wake up."
"And if she doesn't?"
Another shrug. "If she doesn't, she can't blow this place up, can she? Have some sense, Will."
The sound of the outside door opening brought both men back into the present, and Hicks cocked an eyebrow at Hudson. "C'mon. Your public awaits, and I can't cover downstairs on my own."
The comtech glared at him, then shoved past him and down the stairs. Hicks could hear him swearing under his breath as he went and rolled his eyes. Even now, there were times when he really despaired of Hudson. Still...on the plus side, life had just got a lot more interesting. Perhaps it was worth hanging on a little longer, at least until their mystery guest regained consciousness.
Back on Gateway, at the same time as Vasquez was kicking down McDermott's door, Ruin picked up a phone, dialled a number and waited. She'd been debating with herself about the merits of making this call for most of the night, as the steadily growing pile of juice cartons bore witness. Maybe she could just run with it. There was always the chance that Hicks would decide not to follow her.
Yeah, Ruin. And maybe you can just spread wings and fly home yourself. No, the Elite promised you a ride and that's what you're gonna need in the not-too-distant future. They gave you free rein as well. Use it. Get what you need, and do it now, before your roommate wakes up.
Ruin snorted. There wasn't much chance of that yet, not if the snoring coming from Spunkmeyer's room was anything to go by. But still...better safe than sorry. Anyway, if she hung up now they'd just trace the call back to her.
"Yeah?" The voice was low and hoarse, as though the speaker had only just woken up. It was also completely fake, Ruin knew; it belonged to someone called Valmorgen, one of the more approachable agents. Good. That would make this so much easier.
"I think there may be a problem," she said bluntly. You didn't bother making small talk with the Elite, at least, not on this number.
There was a long, long silence.
"What kind of problem?"
"Hicks. He's more headstrong than we thought. I'd lay odds he's thinking of following me to Gateway."
"Impossible," Valmorgen said flatly. "His performance was evaluated by the Elite on an almost constant basis. He's not stupid enough to do something like that."
"I think the Elite may have forgotten that there are other things which govern people besides logic," Ruin retorted. "Look, he liked Ripley and he likes the kid. He's got no family of his own left. Newt's about all he has. He's not going to give up so easily, and he's not the kind of guy to sit on his hands all day either."
"He may have to." Now Valmorgen's tone held a distinct warning, which Ruin ignored. It wasn't meant for her. "I'll pass your message on, though," the agent continued, "and we'll find someone to send. Now, was that all?"
"Yeah, unless..." Ruin's voice tailed off, then she straightened almost unconsciously. "The kid's initial disappearance. Was the Elite responsible for that as well?"
The instant the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back. Criticising the Elite's actions would most likely get you a bullet through the head, if you were lucky. If not, there were always predators somewhere in need of food.
"We don't interfere, Ruin." To her relief, Valmorgen sounded more amused than angry, and so Ruin bit down hard on the comment that what they had done and were doing so far sure seemed like interfering from where she was standing. "Do you need anything else?"
Ruin considered. "Do you have living addresses for the survivors?"
Valmorgen snorted. "What you got is what we got. We found Hudson and Dietrich for you, and we got Hicks down there as well, despite the efforts of certain do-gooders," she added, rather sourly. "Anything else?"
Ruin grinned. It had been a fundamentally simple plan, she supposed. Get three people in a ship to break down, get Hicks to jump-start them and then send those people to Hudson to accidentally mention the corporal's name. The only problem had been that the people in question had chosen to break down on one of the busier flight lanes, and consequently had been jump-started and had had to break down again several times before Hicks had finally come along.
"A custom-built mansion on a private Earth island?" she said aloud, more to gage the reaction than anything, and was relieved when she heard Valmorgen laugh.
"Well, we could get you that without too much trouble, but I don't think I could convince the commander that it's a necessity."
"Fine, forget it then," Ruin said, the mock petulance in her tone covering her sudden shock. Dear god, did the Elite really have that kind of money behind them? No wonder they were so fucking omnipotent! "What were you saying earlier? You mentioned Apone?"
"Yes, I did, and he's the only one the Company didn't get their hands on that we really can't trace." Now Valmorgen was the one sounding petulant.
Ruin half-smiled. The Elite was used to the occasional hiccup when it came to tracing people, but it was almost unheard-of for it to be balked so effortlessly.
"Hudson told me he was working as a personal trainer," she offered.
"I know. We've checked the listings for Gateway and several other registered worlds. In time we'll get through all of them, but it's going to take time. These people spread further than we thought, and we have no idea which colonies might warrant a trainer."
"Maybe he changed his name." Ruin reached out and poured herself another glass of juice.
"We've been working on that one too. The agents in Legal have been doing overtime trying to figure out the procedure. About the only thing they can agree on is that it has to be declared via deed poll, and no deed poll has been registered under Apone's name. So if he did change it, he did so illegally, and that's pretty strange for an NCO."
Ruin gritted her teeth. "Do you have anything?"
"The guys in S&D have come up with three possible sightings. Two of those were on Gateway, in a top security zone."
"Yeah?" Ruin picked up her note-taking pen again and, in the absence of anything more important, started to doodle absently. "Did the Company get hold of him?"
"No. That much is guaranteed; we've been tracking the Company's movements extensively. There are several areas we haven't managed to penetrate yet, but the sergeant hasn't been near them. We've been monitoring all activity on the outskirts, as well as the activity in your own apartment."
Ruin shifted awkwardly. That last was a set piece, she knew; something to both gage her reaction as well as to warn her not to do or say anything stupid.
"Is the rent paid on this place?" she said.
Nice, Ruin. So much for not saying anything stupid.
Valmorgen laughed. "Rent? The Elite owns this apartment, Ruin. We like to keep as many doors open as possible."
"The bills, then. Food, electricity, TV, are they taken care of?"
"All paid for. Stop worrying so much; so long as you keep your nose clean, Gateway's not going to have any legitimate reason to kick you out. At least, not one related to the apartment. The bills are sorted, including the internet access and cable channels on the TV, although I have a message from the secondary commander to tell your pilot to ease up on the pay-per-view before he bankrupts us completely."
Ruin snorted. Buying out Weyland-Yutani and all the associated worlds and colonies probably wouldn't be enough to bankrupt the Elite.
"Okay. I need someone to get hold of some stuff and get it delivered here. A complete three-dimensional blueprint of Gateway, or at least as much of it as you've been able to get, at least two hundred dollars in cash for additional expenses -- bribes and such -- and I want a copy of Ripley's flight recorder, the one on the escape pod. The undoctored one. I can't think it'll be much use really, but it might help."
Valmorgen hesitated. "Alright. That last one will be difficult, but not impossible. You'll get it all, except for the money."
"What?" Ruin stared at the telephone in her hand. "Look, if it's all paid for here, fine, but I told you; I'm gonna need some for bribes. Or if I find something I need at that second."
"The answer is no. You happen to be sharing an apartment with someone who earns four and a half thousand a month on his pension which, incidentally, someone must have pulled some pretty long strings to get for him. Borrow money from him."
Ruin's fingers curled tightly around the phone until her knuckles were white, her teeth clenched. Bloody typical; if you were working for the Elite, you could get anything from a pair of shoes to an atomic bomb and the top-secret plans for how it was made as well, but forget about money.
"Dan already has his knife into me for blackmailing him into flying here in the first place. I don't think he'd be likely to lend me his cashcard, do you?"
"He'll be reimbursed."
Now Ruin was glaring at the telephone. "Oh, so you'll give him money--!"
"If you get a receipt, we'll reimburse him, yes. Only with a receipt, though."
Ruin opened her mouth to protest this, then remembered exactly who she was dealing with and closed it again rather hurriedly. "Alright. Fine. I'll see what he says." In the other room, Spunkmeyer's snoring abruptly stopped and Ruin swore under her breath. "Shit! He's waking up. I'm done anyway; send the stuff and we can finish this once and for all."
She slammed down the phone just as Spunkmeyer emerged, yawning, and headed straight for the kitchen.
"Who was that?"
Ruin glanced at him and said the first thing that came into her head. "Telesales. God knows how they got hold of the number."
"Oh...right." Spunkmeyer yawned again as he clicked the kettle on. Ruin rolled her eyes. Coffee. Get one hit of the stuff and it seemed you couldn't function properly without it.
"You were a colony brat, weren't you?" she said idly as the dropship crew chief came out with what Ruin mentally termed his morning fix. He glanced at her, suspicion warring with defensiveness.
"Yeah. So?"
"Do they have personal trainers there?"
"What?"
"Personal trainers. Fitness instructors. You know? Were there any?"
The dropship crew chief snorted. "Where I came from? Please. We didn't usually have time to hang around with half naked body-builders."
Ruin snapped her fingers. "Oh yeah, that reminds me; go easy on the pay-per-view, Dan. I had a complaint from the people paying for this about the amount you've been watching."
"What?" Spunkmeyer almost dropped his coffee. "How the fuck would they know?"
"I imagine they got a copy of our itemised bill," Ruin said candidly. "Believe me, that's not hard for these guys. Or they could have just gone straight into the broadcasting station and traced it, though I'm not sure if that's possible." She shrugged. "Either way, they know and unless you want us both kicked out of here--"
"Which would suit me fine."
Ruin shrugged again. "Yeah? Well, the door's over there. You wanna walk without collecting your pay, go right ahead. It'll make things a lot easier for me."
Spunkmeyer hesitated, then dropped onto the couch with a sour expression. "Goddamn you," Ruin heard him mutter, and smirked.
"He already has, Dan. Why do you think I got landed with this mission?"
"Huh?" The young man glanced up at her, startled. "Mission?"
Ruin raised her eyebrows. "Please. You think I volunteered to do this out of the kindness of my heart? I had orders, Dan, and they involved getting that kid back to Hicks as soon as possible, by any means necessary." She shrugged. "I'm not getting paid enough to ask questions. I was hired for this mission and when it's over and we're square, I'll go my way and you'll go yours. That's all."
Spunkmeyer gulped at the coffee, wincing as it burned his mouth. "Y'know, I keep meaning to ask you; what's your interest in all this?"
"Money."
The dropship crew chief blinked. "What, Hicks is gonna pay you for finding his kid?"
"Not that I know of." Ruin paused. That was an intriguing idea though; she'd have to remember it. "No...I'm working for someone else. They'll settle with me once it's done."
"The Corps?"
Ruin stared at him for a few minutes, then burst out laughing. "Hardly! No, I'm working for someone powerful."
"The Corps is powerful," Spunkmeyer protested, while at the same time wondering what difference it made. "Take it from me; I was in it. I've seen creatures and things you can't even imagine."
"I doubt that, Dan. I have a very warped imagination."
"Yeah?" Spunkmeyer lowered his voice to the kind of pitch usually reserved for campfires. "Imagine this, then. On my last mission, I saw a type of creature you don't even wanna see in your nightmares. They were taller than a man, and so black you can't see them in the darkness...and it was plenty dark out there. They have claws, teeth -- hell, even their tongues have teeth -- and their tails have stings in them. One jab from those, and you're paralysed for hours. They can do what they want with you then, and believe me, whatever they want ain't pretty. You gotta be one hell of a good soldier to deal with that kinda pressure, know what I'm saying? Because the worst thing about them was, you couldn't shoot them at close range unless you wanted to die as well; they had acid for blood that was so concentrated, even a drop would burn right through your body and leave a hole on the other side."
Ruin raised her eyebrows, then rolled back her sleeve to reveal a tattoo of an alien on her bicep, in intricate detail.
"Were they, by any chance, something like this?"
Vasquez supposed it had been a pretty good morning so far. Even if she hadn't managed to get the supplies, McDermott's humiliation had more than made up for it. The woman's good mood lasted for as long as it took her to get back to her apartment and open the door. She barely had time to register the chairs that had somehow gone from under the table to halfway across the room, or the shattered crockery and the stain on the wall, before she found herself looking into a face that struck her as being one third bureaucrat, one third slimeball, and three quarters big, happy smile. She'd seen faces like that before, when she hadn't been much older than Newt, and like most kids in that neighbourhood had made a point of avoiding them wherever possible.
Newt...
The smartgun operator's eyes flicked around the apartment rapidly, then fixed the smile with a hard stare. "Alright. Three questions, and I'm only doing it this way because I'm feeling generous. One, who the hell are you? Two, what do you want? Three, where's the kid?"
"I'm here." Newt emerged cautiously from under the table, the set of her muscles telling anyone who might be interested that she was prepared to bolt at the slightest provocation. The smartgun operator glanced at her.
"You okay?"
A look of complete and utter shock appeared on Newt's face for a brief instant -- Vasquez had never concerned herself with Newt's well-being before -- then she nodded. Satisfied, Vasquez returned her attention to the man in front of her.
"So that's one question answered. What about the other two?"
"Ms Vasquez, I presume?" The smile's owner held out a hand. Vasquez gave it a cursory glance, then returned her attention to the hand's owner. Call it petty if you like, but there were enough childhood instincts still left over for her to want to avoid all associations with this man, even one as trivial as a handshake.
"Maybe," she said automatically. "Who are you?"
"My name's Richard Dalton. I've been assigned to your case."
A jolt of adrenaline shot through the smartgun operator's veins, one which she managed to mask behind an impassive face. Having someone assigned to your case wasn't usually a good thing, no matter where you were.
"What case?" Vasquez shook her head. "No, don't tell me; it's something to do with the fucking Company, right?"
"Well, as a matter of fact--"
"Knew it. Sorry, Dalton; you're talking to the wrong person." The smartgun operator paused for all of two seconds before adding, "And I'll take back the sorry part. I have nothing to do with the Company."
"That doesn't mean that the Company has nothing to do with you, though."
That was a very good point, Vasquez thought sourly, and it didn't sound any better coming from the likes of Dalton either.
"It's all go in the business world, after all," Dalton said, rubbing his hands, for all the world like a kindergarten teacher trying to jolly a class along.
"Is it?" Vasquez said frostily. "I haven't seen it for three and a half weeks."
Dalton's big, happy smile slipped a notch for a few seconds before being hooked firmly back onto its owner's lips. "Now, now, this attitude isn't helping anyone, is it?"
"Fucking right." Coldly, Vasquez turned her back on him. "Come back when you can act your age, not your IQ."
Dalton hesitated, then let the big, happy smile go. It didn't seem to be working. "I'm here for the child."
That worked, although probably not in the way he would have liked; Vasquez slammed the door shut and whirled to face him, danger in her eyes. "Excuse me?"
"I told him you said I could stay with you," Newt said. "I said he was jus' talking a load of...of potas."
"Pelotas," Vasquez corrected her automatically.
"Yeah, an' then he said that I didn't know what I was talking about an' that I'd worried a lot of people when I'd left."
"He did, huh?" The smartgun operator leaned against the door, arms folded across her chest.
"Yeah, an' then he called me a liar."
Vasquez raised an eyebrow. Newt was many things, but she was at least honest. A little too honest at times.
"I did no such thing," Dalton said, somewhat pompously. "I merely pointed out that with her problems, she couldn't possibly be expected to remember what was said, and children have a tendency to twist words to suit themselves."
"Yes, but Vasquez did say--" Newt began.
"Ms Vasquez, Rebecca."
The girl turned a pleading look on Vasquez who, for once, decided to answer it. "Only anal retentives like you bother with that formal shit," she said, the smoothness of her voice in no way detracting from the malice there. "Anyway, her name's Newt."
Newt's look turned from pleading to astounded in a remarkably short space of time. Looking up at Vasquez, she was sure she saw the woman wink, almost too quickly to be noticed.
"Not according to the records," Dalton said obstinately. "We find that in the case of deeply disturbed children, use of their given name helps them to keep a hold on reality."
"It didn't work for me," Vasquez remarked, her tone so neutral that Dalton wasn't sure if she was joking or not.
"You have no experience in such places, Ms Vasquez."
"Only because I wasn't dumb enough to let assholes like you catch me," Vasquez answered, then glanced at Newt. "No offence."
Dalton shook his head. "This is pointless. I didn't come to trade cheap insults. The home is willing to take back the child, keeping her under strict supervision, of course."
"Yeah? Well, the child herself seems to be not so willing," Vasquez said, eyes focused on a point some six inches above Dalton's head.
"Vaz?" Newt glanced up at the smartgun operator nervously, edging as close to her as she dared, not wanting to jeopardise the temporary alliance that seemed to have been formed between the two of them. "Vaz, I'm not gonna have to go back to that place, am I?"
Vasquez glanced down at her, then back up at Dalton. "No. No, you're not."
"You're in no position to refuse," Dalton informed Vasquez briskly. "Her wild behavior has led some of the top child psychiatrists to believe she is deeply, psychologically disturbed."
Newt glanced up at Vasquez. "What's that mean?"
"They think you're a psycho," the smartgun operator translated, somewhat liberally.
"She would need regular sedation and restraining until her violence is curbed," Dalton added. "Following my initial assessment of her, I would say that this is extremely important."
Vasquez raised her eyebrows in disbelief. "Shit, Newt, you bit him too?"
"No!" the girl protested, then, "Well...yeah. But not that hard! It didn't make him bleed or anything."
"No?" The smartgun operator looked Dalton straight in the eyes as she spoke. "What a pity."
In all honesty, she didn't blame the child. Given the way Dalton was acting now, Vasquez was almost tempted to take a chunk out of him herself. Dalton glanced from one to the other, realizing perhaps for the first time that he wasn't likely to have an ally in this woman.
"She also attacked me with a chair."
"I didn't," Newt said stubbornly. "I was jus' moving it'n'it slipped outta my hands."
"She threw it at me," Dalton insisted to Vasquez, who was suddenly looking far more interested. The smartgun operator glanced at Newt.
"Did you?"
Newt shook her head vigorously. "No, I was moving it and it slipped! Honest!"
"She was moving it around her person in ever increasing circles," Dalton said tightly.
Newt glared at him. "See? I was moving it, then. I was moving it an' it slipped, jus' like I said."
Dalton took a deep breath. "It slipped right across the room and into my..." He broke off suddenly.
"Your what, Dalton?" Vasquez said, smiling slightly.
"This is hardly the sort of thing to discuss in front of a child."
The smartgun operator reached up and pulled off her bandanna, toying with it idly. "Oh, I don't know. You want my support against her wild and disturbed behaviour, I think I should know what it was first."
Dalton shifted from one foot to the other. "My...manly regions, then, if you insist."
"Really?" Vasquez glanced at him, then dropped to one knee in front of Newt, putting herself on an eye level with the child and pointedly turning her back on Dalton as she did so. "Newt?"
The girl eyed her slightly warily, still not entirely sure whose side Vasquez was on. "What?"
"Did you really throw a chair into his dick?"
Newt hesitated. "Um. Kinda. I was jus'...uh...I was swinging it round and he came in an' I was jus'...I got a little upset an' one thing sorta led to another."
A grin appeared on Vasquez' face, the first genuine one in what seemed like years. "Yeah? Nice one. Wish I could've seen it."
"I could try and do it again," Newt offered.
"No," Vasquez said firmly, although she did consider it for a few minutes. The idea had a certain elegance...
Dalton cleared his throat, bringing an abrupt end to the smartgun operator's semi-daydream. "This is getting us nowhere fast. If you're fond of the girl, we may be able to arrange visitation rights for you--"
Vasquez' eyebrows shot up. "I don't think your buddy McDermott would like that very much. And anyway, I'm not fond of her. I just don't want to have to face Hicks and tell him that I let his precious little darling be carted off to some prison without a fight."
"Prison?!" Now Dalton appeared genuinely hurt. "Ms Vasquez, the approved care homes are not prisons! They're a place where underprivileged or mentally disturbed children can enjoy a good home and education."
"Save the bullshit for the garden, Dalton," Vasquez said curtly. "The kid's staying with me, and that's final."
"I'm afraid it's not up to you to decide. The law is very clear on this matter." Dalton stepped forward and took hold of Newt's arm, not roughly but firmly. "Someone will come over to collect her things."
He tried to pull Newt towards the door and failed, largely due to the fact that Vasquez had taken hold of Newt's other arm in one hand and Dalton's lapels in the other.
"The law ain't holding you by the throat," Vasquez said in dangerous tones. "Get away from her. Now."
Newt winced as the man tightened his hold.
"You're not helping either yourself or the child, Ms Vasquez. Your actions are only serving to distress her further."
Vasquez set her jaw slightly. "I think your gripping her hard enough to turn your fucking knuckles white is what's distressing her, Dalton. Either you let go right now, or I'll see to it you're never able to grip anyone again."
Dalton shook his head. "You can't intimidate me with such melodramatic threats. Once we're outside the area, you won't be in any position to enforce your claim."
Vasquez' hand moved from the man's lapels' to his free wrist so fast it was almost a blur. "No, I don't think you're listening to me," she said very softly. "I said you'd never be able to grab anyone again. As in, losing the physical ability." An idea occurred to her and she acted on it immediately. "Of course...if you're so set on taking her, please go ahead."
"What?" Newt stared up at her with a look of such hurt betrayal that Vasquez found she couldn't meet the girl's eyes. "But...but Vaz, I..."
"Well, if he really wants you so badly..." Vasquez let the sentence trail off with a shrug, then glanced up at Dalton as though just remembering something. "Although, I have heard certain stories..."
"Oh yes?" Now that the smartgun operator seemed inclined to cooperate, Dalton was far more affable. "There are always stories, Ms Vasquez. The press gets something and twists it out of proportion. I won't deny that...undesirable things go on in certain institutions, but you can't blame the Company for that. These things have been going on for centuries."
"Right. And...you don't think that things like this would only serve to push the kid further over the edge?"
Dalton lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "Once she's out of here, that won't be your concern."
Vasquez smiled, the kind of smile a snake might give just before it struck. "I'm not so sure. See, I have something of a personal interest in this kid's welfare. I'd want to see the place for myself. You wanna take her, you take me as well." Once the pair of them were outside, Vasquez was sure she could get herself and Newt to safety. Gorman...well, it was a shame, but once she could get somewhere safe and contact the others, maybe they could do something to get him out later.
"What?" Now Dalton appeared genuinely scandalised. "This facility is not a place someone can just walk in and out of! Especially not someone like--" He broke off abruptly and glanced away.
"Go ahead, say it," Vasquez shot back, her eyes full of dark ice. "Someone like me." She shook her head. "If that's how you're gonna be, maybe your taking Newt ain't such a good idea after all."
Dalton's face froze, in the manner of someone who isn't sure if his opponent's bluffing or not. Next to him, Newt was also staring at Vasquez in much the same manner.
"Ms Vasquez...the stories you may have heard are hardly credible unless they were a first-hand account, and such things are very rare."
"It was a first-hand account, asshole." No longer even pretending to be cooperative, Vasquez released Newt and used both hands to twist the man's wrist around into a gooselock. The pain involved was excruciating, as she herself could bear witness. Exerting all the pressure she could, the smartgun operator leaned in to Dalton's ear and lowered her voice to a venomous hiss. "When I was eight, you bastards came and stole my best friend. She kept escaping, though, and coming back to our neighbourhood. When we were ten, she told me everything that had gone on in that place, just before she was dragged back there for what must have been the hundredth time, and if you think I'm going to sit back and let you do the same thing to this kid after all she's been through already, you're fucking insane."
Dalton winced as the agony in his hand and wrist tripled. "Can't we at least discuss this like adults?" he managed to get out, through teeth gritted with the pain.
"I'm not big on discussion," Vasquez informed him flatly. "You let Newt go, I let you go, and you take off and never come back." She wrenched the man's arm up viciously behind his back. "Or I can just start breaking limbs right now, see how long you can last before giving in."
Dalton went chalk white, black spots flashing in front of his eyes. He hadn't thought so much pain could be crammed into one arm. Stiffly, almost as though he wasn't in control of it, his other hand opened one finger at a time. Newt yanked away as hard as she could, tearing out of his grasp, and bolted for her room, slamming the door hard behind her. Smirking slightly, Vasquez released Dalton.
"Now fuck off out of here before I change my mind about beating you to a pulp."
Dalton touched his arm gingerly, as if to make sure it was really there, then turned an angry look on the smartgun operator, who ignored it. Vasquez had been the recipient of far too many baleful stares to be moved by one more.
"I'll give you one more chance," Dalton told her. "Either you stop this pointless violence--"
"Didn't seem too pointless to me."
"--or I'll have you arrested."
The smartgun operator raised her eyebrows, feigning innocence. It didn't quite come off -- innocence and Vasquez had parted company years ago -- but at least she felt like she was trying.
"Arrested for what, Dalton? You ain't even marked." She shook her head. "Get the fuck out of here before I decide I'll change that and to hell with the consequences. People like you make me sick." The smartgun operator paused. "And when you consider the kind of people I grew up with, that's one hell of an insult," she added.
Dalton opened his mouth to argue, then noticed the slight smile Vasquez was wearing and closed it again reluctantly. There was something about that expression...you didn't want to antagonise its owner without a much better reason than some disturbed brat.
"You'll be hearing about this from my superiors," he offered as a parting shot. Vasquez snorted.
"Probably, but since I can't speak assholese, I'll save my worrying for important things. Like the bugs you got in that lab of yours."
Dalton froze, then slowly turned back to stare at her.
"Yeah, you heard me," Vasquez said, smiling insincerely. "You scurry back to McDermott or Russell or whoever the fuck you work for and tell them I know all about this little operation. And tell 'em that next time someone tries to kidnap my roommate, I won't be as polite as I was to you. I'll just plug 'em." She retrieved her pulse rifle from the couch and tapped the barrel meaningfully, still smiling at the man.
Dalton's breath quickened slightly, but otherwise there was no sign of fear in the man. He was either too arrogant for his own good, Vasquez thought, or one hell of an actor. Possibly both.
"That is an illegal weapon," the man said, forcing the words out past a constricted throat.
Vasquez gave a hollow laugh. "Call the Marines."
There was an awkward silence.
"Is there any reason you're still here?" the smartgun operator said at the end of it.
"If you think--" Dalton began, then backed off reflexively as the gun came to point at his chest.
"They say you're not supposed to point a firearm at anything you're not willing to destroy," Vasquez remarked. "You want to debate this further?"
The man took a step towards the door, then stopped. "I feel I ought to warn you this is going to--"
Vasquez gritted her teeth, lowered the gun onto the couch and then grabbed Dalton by the lapels and half carried him over to the door.
"Goddammit man; will you get out!" She slid open the door and literally threw the man outside, ignoring the startled exclamations from those unlucky enough to be outside her apartment. "And if you really want the kid, send a Marine for her," she added, slammed the door and leaned against it, mind racing furiously.
Why the hell are they so obsessed with Newt? It's not like them to fixate on one kid like this.
The smartgun operator massaged her forehead tiredly. She'd been getting a lot of headaches lately, and they all seemed to have started after Newt had moved in. And speaking of which -- Vasquez glanced towards the bedroom door -- she probably ought to do something about that kid.
You really are getting soft, an inner voice sneered. Time was you'd just leave her to stew in her own juice; hell, time was you wouldn't even have let her in in the first place.
Vasquez considered this idea, dismissed it rather abruptly and crossed over to the door. Briefly she wondered whether she ought to knock, then told herself angrily not to be so damn pathetic -- just whose apartment was it, anyway? -- and opened it instead.
"Hey kid."
Newt just looked at her mutely from the bed, the expression of betrayal still in those bright blue eyes. Vasquez took a deep breath. "Look. I'm sorry, okay? I had to say something."
"You were gonna let him take me."
"No." Vasquez shook her head. "If I'd wanted that, I wouldn't have almost broken his arm, would I? It could have got both of us out if it had worked. It didn't, he's gone, and good fucking riddance. End of story."
Newt continued to regard her stolidly, clearly unconvinced. "Vaz?"
"What?"
"What happened to your friend? The one you told Dalton about?"
Vasquez shrugged. "I don't know. I never saw her again after that day." She glanced abruptly through the open door at the empty couch. "Where's the lieutenant?"
"In the kitchen. I wasn't sure if it was you or someone else knocking so I moved him."
The smartgun operator rolled her eyes. "Can you think of any reason why I'd knock on my own door?" She frowned slightly as the rest of the girl's sentence hit her. "You moved him?"
Newt shifted her feet uncomfortably. "Well...I know you're not s'posed to, but I thought someone might've found out he was gone and come looking for him. So...yeah. Sorry."
"By yourself?"
"Yeah. I had to roll him off the couch an' it took me ages to get him into the kitchen, but yeah."
Vasquez raised her eyebrows. She was reluctantly impressed; the kid must have been pretty determined to drag that much dead weight around.
"Vaz, what if that guy comes back?" Newt said suddenly. The smartgun operator got the definite feeling that Newt had been trying to pluck up enough courage to ask this for a while now. She shrugged.
"If he does, he does. So what?"
"Can't we shut the door? Like when you did on Acheron with that fire thing?"
"Weld ourselves in, you mean?" Vasquez shook her head. "Point one, we don't have a welding torch. Point two, I don't want to get trapped here." A rare flash of honesty forced her to add, "At least, no more than I am already."
Newt bit her lip. "So what're we gonna do?"
Vasquez whirled. "Okay, first of all, there's no we! Secondly, you do what you want. I'm going to crash for a few hours and if you so much as think as waking me up for anything less than a life-or-death situation, I'll call Dalton myself and tell him I've changed my mind!" She spun on her heel and strode out, slamming the door so hard behind her that it rattled in its frame.
Left alone, Newt flopped back onto the bed again with a sigh. Just when she thought she had a handle on the smartgun operator's moods and personality, the woman threw her a curve ball.
In the other room and unaware of the thoughts going through her roommate's head, Vasquez lay down on her bed, not bothering with the covers, and was asleep almost instantly.
It was some ten hours later when the smartgun operator finally emerged again, yawning, and then it was only because her thirst had woken her.
"You're up?" Gorman said.
Vasquez blinked -- she was still more asleep than awake and hadn't noticed him sitting at the table -- then snorted.
"Yeah? Looks like I'm not the only one. I see you crawled back to the land of the living."
"Barely." The lieutenant's voice was a lot hoarser than it had been the day before. "I woke up ten minutes or so back." He sipped at the mug he was holding and made a wry face. Vasquez' gaze sharpened.
"What's that?"
"Coffee, or a pretty good imitation. Newt made it; I didn't have the heart to tell her you're supposed to boil the water, not just turn the hot faucet on full." Gorman stretched out one leg experimentally and winced as it pulled on injured muscles. "That reminds me; where do you keep the cloths?"
"I don't."
"Ah. In that case, I recommend you don't go in the kitchen for a while either."
"What?" Vasquez stared at him disbelievingly. "And who the fuck are you to tell me--"
"It was a recommendation, Vasquez, not an order," Gorman said tiredly. "Stop taking everything so personally. If I hadn't mentioned it and you went in and found it--"
"Found what?"
"--you'd have wanted to know why I hadn't said anything."
"Found what, Gorman?" Vasquez repeated; her tone dangerous.
The lieutenant hesitated, then shrugged. "There's a little puddle on the floor, that's all. It's nothing to be concerned about."
"A little puddle of what, exactly?" Vasquez demanded. People who had spent most of their time on barrio streets and in penitentiaries soon learned the value of questions like that.
"Water, of course." The lieutenant nodded towards the kitchen door which, Vasquez noticed for the first time, was tightly closed.
"Do I want to know?"
"I doubt it." Gorman hesitated, then took a deep breath. "Thank you."
Vasquez blinked. "For what?"
"Newt told me that you nursed me for most of the night."
The smartgun operator, who had been about to start paging through the TV guide in the somewhat vain hope of finding a decent slasher movie, slammed the magazine down onto the table and made a mental note to have a little chat with Newt about the finer points of discretion, especially vis-à-vis street cred.
"Alright. Let's get this straight right now; I did not nurse you! I just...helped things along a little, that's all!"
Gorman smiled slightly. "Whatever you did, Newt says you saved my life. So...thanks."
Vasquez snorted. "Big fucking deal, Gorman. You saved mine. We're quits, that's all." She managed to pause for all of three seconds before her curiosity got the better of her. "What happened to you, anyway? You didn't get those injuries from any bug."
Gorman sighed.
"I suppose I can tell you, since it seems to be only by chance that they didn't put you in the same boat. I don't know what happened in the beginning; I remember the facehugger coming towards me on Acheron, and then I woke up in that cell. I don't know how long I'd been there; I just know that shortly after awakening, I had a meeting with some Company guy or another. I tried to explain about Acheron and what had happened, and he said that I was obviously mentally impaired or disturbed and I didn't know what I was talking about, and please stop smirking like that, Vasquez. I said I wasn't about to pretend that everything was alright and that half my platoon wasn't lying dead on that hellworld, no matter what the goddamned Company said." Gorman gave a kind of twisted smile. "They were...how shall I say it...upset? Yes, I think upset would be a very good way of putting it."
"The Company did that to you?"
"No. No, the Company tried to get me a facehugger. The medtechs did that to me, although I'm pretty sure it was on the Company's orders." Gorman shrugged. "They wanted to know where the others were. The little fact that I'd been unconscious when they came in and then went their separate ways didn't seem to figure in their tiny world."
"They tortured you?" Vasquez said disbelievingly. "How?"
The lieutenant shifted uncomfortably, his grip on the mug intensifying until his knuckles were white as he stared into the tepid contents.
"Let's not go into details, okay? I didn't tell them anything because there was nothing I could tell them. End of story."
"Did you talk to Ripley?"
"Before she died? Yeah. She didn't seem too surprised. All she was really worried about was Newt. She said we had to get out while we could. I decided to follow her advice...for once," Gorman added ruefully. "The only reason you're talking to me and not her is because they decided to kill her first."
"You sure she's dead?"
"I saw her goddamned body, Vasquez! They made a point of showing me, then asked if I was sure I didn't know where anyone else was."
"Shit." Vasquez glanced over her shoulder towards the kitchen. "You didn't drink all the coffee, did you?"
"No, but you don't want to go in there."
"Don't tell me what I do and don't want, Gorman." The smartgun operator crossed over to the door and reached up to open it.
"You'll really wish you hadn't, Vasquez," Gorman said.
"Maybe you will." Vasquez hit the button, opened the door and barely had time to get out the way before a small wave of water swamped her ankles and the carpet beyond.
There was a silence, during which the atmosphere thickened noticeably.
"Where," Vasquez demanded at the end of it, "is that kid??"
Gorman regarded her steadily. "I'm not telling you until you've calmed down."
"How the fuck can you flood a kitchen like that through making one goddamn cup of coffee?"
"I wanted to try making pancakes," Newt said from her doorway, somewhat apprehensively.
Vasquez turned a killing stare on the girl, who flinched. "Go on..."
Newt squirmed. "Well...Gorman said he had a recipe an'...an' we didn't have a pan so he suggested mixing it in the sink an'...it kinda went hard."
The smartgun operator shifted the glare onto Gorman, who suddenly seemed very interested in his paper. "I see, and what do you know about this?"
The lieutenant shrugged, but didn't meet her gaze. "I didn't think it'd congeal so fast. It dripped down the plughole and hardened there."
"Right." Vasquez sat down at the table and rubbed her forehead tiredly, wondering as she did so if all the world except her had gone insane. "So where the fuck did the water come from?"
Newt pointed at Gorman, who reddened. "He said he'd try and dilute it and that I should get clear before you got back in case you blamed me."
"And the flood?"
"Hm." Newt considered. "Dunno. I guess he just got busy doing something else and forgot to turn the faucet off."
Gorman shifted his weight. "I had something to attend to."
Vasquez rolled her eyes. "How long do you need to take a piss?"
"Not that sort of something!" The lieutenant took one or two deep breaths. "I needed to change my bandage."
"And you couldn't've left it for five minutes while you cleaned up or at least turned the faucet off?" The smartgun operator paused, one train of thought overtaking the other. "How the hell'd you change your bandage, anyway? What you had on was all there was."
"There's always another way around a problem," Gorman said calmly. "Often one which doesn't involve adding to one's police record," he couldn't resist adding. Vasquez glared at him.
"Alright. You wanna tell me and I'll admit I'm interested. How the fuck did you do it?"
"I went to Char's and asked if she had any spare stuff," Newt volunteered from the armchair, where she was now pretending to read one of the few Spanish novels that had been provided with the apartment.
Vasquez shifted the glare onto Newt, who squirmed slightly, trying not to notice. "And you couldn't have fucking mentioned this before I pissed off McDermott again?"
"I thought you liked pissing off McDermott," Newt said.
Vasquez narrowed her eyes. The girl's wide-eyed, innocent expression was just a little too wide-eyed and innocent.
Gorman chuckled softly.
"She has a point there, Vasquez, even if she does make it rather...crudely." This last was said with a pointed look at Newt, one which would have been a lot more effective if she'd actually been looking in the lieutenant's direction at the time. "Anyway, you'd already left." He paused. "And while we're on the subject of leaving, can someone please explain to me why I went to sleep on your couch and woke up in what I can only assume to be your gym?"
"You assume right," Vasquez told him sarcastically. "As to why, the kid moved you when you were out."
"Oh, right," Gorman said, then frowned. "Say again?"
"Why? Did you have difficulty understanding it the first time?"
"Newt moved me?"
"Why does everyone have problems believing me?" Newt wanted to know.
Gorman ran a hand through his hair. "Why?"
"Some bastard came for her from one of the so-called care homes," Vasquez said carelessly. "She didn't want you discovered."
"Right..." The lieutenant rested his head in his hands. The pain in his skull was getting worse with every new word of this conversation. "So why didn't she just go with him?"
There was a short pause. "Vaz?" Newt said, slightly apprehensively.
"Yeah?"
The girl pointed at the lieutenant. "If Gorman tries to get me back to that place, will you break his arm as well?"
"She broke this guy's arm?"
Vasquez raised an appraising eyebrow. "If it comes to it, yeah."
"You broke his arm?" Gorman repeated tonelessly.
The smartgun operator and Newt exchanged eye-rolls and shared a very brief moment of camaraderie that started with the astronomical levels of exasperation inflicted by officers and built from there.
"Why wait until he tries something?" Vasquez muttered, not quite under her breath.
"His arm?"
"Well...it didn't crack," Newt said reflectively, "so I guess she didn't really break it...she jus'..."
"What?"
"Well, she kinda twisted it around an' bent it an' it looked like it hurt."
"It does," Vasquez assured her. "A lot."
Gorman opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Lecturing Vasquez didn't usually do much more than give him a sore throat.
"How do you do it, anyway?" Newt said, studying her own arm curiously.
"If Gormless floods my kitchen again, I'll be more than happy to show you," the smartgun operator answered.
"May I remind you that I happened to save your life?" the lieutenant said irritably.
"And I saved yours," Vasquez retorted. "And let's not forget the little fact that it was your incompetence that got Drake killed."
"My incompetence?" Now Gorman's voice was dangerously quiet. "Funny, that. I seem to remember that you were the one who continued shooting that alien even after it was dead and it was your bullets which caused that acid to spray in the first place. So if you want to blame anybody for Drake's death, why don't you start with yourself?"
There was a deathly silence, which lasted all of thirty seconds before Vasquez pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. There was an odd, closed expression on her face which Gorman seriously didn't like and he shifted his weight awkwardly.
"I didn't mean that, Vasquez. I'm sorry."
The smartgun operator didn't answer, which unnerved Gorman a lot more than her screaming abuse at him would have done. Instead, Vasquez calmly, deliberately pushed her chair back under the table, then turned and walked stiffly into her room.
"Vasquez..." Gorman reached out to try and stop her, but as if she'd been expecting it, the woman veered aside and kept going. The bedroom door closed softly behind her in a manner that was strangely ominous, and the lieutenant found himself alone with Newt. He sighed. All things considered, that had gone just about as well as he'd expected.
Hicks looked down at the tuna sandwich he'd made as though he'd never seen it before in his life, picked it up and then put it down again. He hadn't eaten in two days, and his stomach couldn't seem to make up its mind what it wanted; it swung from hunger to nausea almost constantly, sometimes trying both at the same time for good measure.
In the doorway, Hudson squirmed. Ever since Hicks' revelation, his mind had been whirling rapidly, which hadn't done much to help the hangover. In the end, he'd given up on trying to sleep and dragged himself back down again. He'd been replaying his own behaviour on Acheron almost constantly, and couldn't help feeling a little ashamed.
He never said a word. I was freaking out and Vasquez was trying to declare war on the bugs single-handedly and the others bar Ripley weren't doing much to help either, and all the time we were bitching about how much shit we were in, and he never said a fucking word.
"Forget about it," Hicks said, not looking around. Hudson jumped.
"Hey man, I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to. You have the loudest and most vocal silences of anyone I ever met."
The comtech shifted. "Yeah...well...I was just thinking about, y'know, how we...what happened and-"
"I said forget about it."
Hudson hesitated, then dropped the subject obligingly, saying the first thing that came into his head. "You gonna eat that?"
The older man looked back at his sandwich and felt his stomach slowly turn over in protest. "I was, but now I'm not so hungry." He pushed it over to Hudson. "Go ahead; knock yourself out."
The comtech hesitated, looking wistfully at the sandwich, then shook his head. "Dwayne, have you eaten anything recently?"
"I'm not hungry."
Hudson rolled his eyes. "Thought not." He shoved the plate back at Hicks. "Here."
Hicks shook his head and returned the food. "I said I'm not hungry," he repeated.
Hudson sighed, wishing for the first time that Dietrich was there. The medtech had ample experience in coaxing - or ramming - food down people's throats.
"Dwayne, you gotta eat something before you pass out."
"I'm alright."
"Bullshit you are, man! Look, starving yourself to death for the kid might be noble - or more likely pretty fucking stupid - but what's it gonna achieve?" He pushed the sandwich back, and Hicks shook his head.
"I can't, man. Seriously; I'll just puke it back up."
"To quote the sarge, when I wanna know your limitations, Marine, I'll give 'em to you!"
"Up the ass, twice over," Hicks added, smiling slightly. It had been one of Apone's pet phrases. "Man, I wonder what that guy's doing right now?"
"Probably what he does best; screaming at some guy to train harder," Hudson said wryly, "and don't try changing the subject on me, Dwayne Hicks! Either eat it or I'll get Cyn to rig up an IV."
"That wouldn't be so bad."
"Suppository-style!"
Hicks visibly winced. "Oh man, now I really lost my appetite! You have some very sick places in your mind, you know that?"
"What?" Coming in just in time to hear the last of this, Dietrich headed for the sink and started washing her hands. "Who's sick?"
"Will," Hicks answered, grinning slightly at the younger man's glare.
"Oh right. Stupid question." Dietrich looked around for a towel, failed to find one and settled for wiping her hands on her pants instead.
"How's our guest?" Hicks said.
The medtech sighed.
"Still unconscious. Big fucking surprise there, given the state she's in. I'm amazed she made it as far as she did but then again, we're not gonna know just how far that is until she wakes up. One thing though; she ain't as old as we thought. I'd put her somewhere between you and me. Maybe even slightly younger."
"Is that the you that's been twenty one for the past four years, or the you that actually gets older every year like the rest of us?" Hicks couldn't resist asking. Dietrich shot him a look.
"Ha fucking ha."
There was a short pause.
"So what's wrong with her?" Hicks said eventually.
Dietrich snorted.
"How long've you got? Malnutrition, not too severe, but it's there. Several gashes on her right arm - how the fuck they missed the artery, I've no idea - and a head injury. That's not too severe, it's more of a deep graze than anything. I think she has one or two cracked ribs; she's so bruised there that something must've given. She also has a bullet wound in her hip. She's managed to get the bullet out - Christ knows how, but it must've hurt like a bitch - and there doesn't seem to be any infection. That's to say nothing of the scars she has. Some're faded, but most of 'em are pretty fresh." The medtech shook her head. "Boy, she must ache on rainy days."
"Is she sick?"
"Too early to tell. I don't think so though."
"Great." Hicks shook his head. "So why's she got grey skin?"
"No idea," Dietrich said with a shrug. "I've never come across it. The only things that really come close are Bloch-Sulzberger Syndrome and autonnomic hyperreflexia, and as far as I can tell she's tested negative for both of those." She paused. "And anyway, it's not really grey."
Hicks had to agree. You could call the stranger's skin grey because there was no word for the exact shade, but if he had to describe it, he would have said it was like someone with a good tan who'd had about an inch of dust thrown on them.
"Speaking of malnutrition," Hudson said suddenly, "don't you think Dwayne needs to eat something?"
Hicks glowered at the comtect as Dietrich examined him critically.
"You do look a little peaky."
"I'm Fine," Hicks said through clenched teeth. "Can we please get back on the subject?"
"Didn't know we'd left it." Dietrich opened the cupboard and took out a bowl, then added a clean rag.
"What are you doing?" Hicks said, glad for some diversion.
"I want to clean out that bullet wound. I know I said it doesn't look dirty, but better safe than sorry. I'll be a lot happier once I've gotten her cleaned up and bandaged."
"Yeah?" Hudson pounced on the opening. "And don't you think Dwayne'll be a lot happier once he eats that sandwich instead of playing with it?"
"For god's sake!" Exasperated, Hicks swept the plate off the surface, the dramatic effect of this only slightly spoiled when Hudson caught the sandwich on its way down. "Why this sudden interest in my well-being?"
"Oh, I dunno." Hudson placed the sandwich almost reverently on the worksurface, then removed the top slice and proceeded to liberally slather the contents in pickle before replacing the bread with a satisfactory splat. "Maybe 'cause you happen to be our friend, even if you have been moping around and taking your own irritation and guilt out on me and Cyn!"
Already halfway up the stairs again, Dietrich didn't hear Hicks' answer, although judging from the tone of voice it wasn't a pleasant one.
The girl lay unmoving on the bed, exactly how she'd left her. The medtech had to admit, Marine stealth training came into its own when you were nursing a sleeping patient. Carefully, she placed the bowl down on the side and half turned.
She'd been silent. She knew she had; she'd been one of the best in the troop when it came to stealth exercises and besides, she hadn't moved her feet. But something triggered a reaction in her patient; the stranger's face twitched once or twice, then she jerked away and off the bed, muscles taut. She was fast, Dietrich remembered thinking much later. Even faster than Ruin. One minute she'd been lying there, asleep, and the next she was on her feet on the other side of the room, body awake and readying itself to meet this new threat. That wasn't the strangest thing, though. The strangest thing was that her eyes were barely open; her body had seemingly reacted far faster than her mind, literally flinging her out of danger before she was fully awake.
The medtech held up both hands, palm out. She wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but she knew two things; firstly, she did not want to piss off someone with reflexes like that and secondly, she was very, very relieved that she'd disarmed the girl.
"Hey! Hey, whoah, take it easy! I'm not gonna hurt you."
The stranger's eyes snapped open, and Dietrich backed into the wall. They were too light to be considered a natural brown; instead they were the colour of hot amber, against which the pupils stood out darkly.
"Where am I?" Her voice was quiet, pitched so low as to be almost inaudible, yet somehow the medtech heard every word.
"You're in my friend's bedroom." Dietrich shook her head. "What was that?"
The stranger's look shifted slightly, becoming cautious rather than suspicious.
"What? What was what?"
"That!" Dietrich's usually fluent and often profane language seemed to have temporarily deserted her. "That...you were there and...and now you're there...I know damn well I didn't make any noise, so what the hell woke you?"
"Oh, that." A shrug. "I felt your shadow. It's a reflex action. I can't help it." She reached down to her waist, then jerked her head up again, staring at Dietrich with renewed suspicion. "What happened to my weapons?"
My shadow? Dietrich stared back in open amazement. Who the hell is this person?
"The grenades?" she said aloud, like it was no big deal. "We put 'em in the safe."
"I want them back."
The medtech snorted.
"Yeah, I'll just bet you do! You can wait, though; I'm not letting you have them until I'm convinced you're not gonna collapse again and blow the whole place. Actually, I'm not letting you have them until I'm convinced you're not gonna blow the whole place anyway." She shook her head, wondering how best to phrase the next part, and decided on honesty. "Look, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but do you have some kind of disfiguring skin disease?"
There was a pause, then the girl said, "Was there a right way to take that?"
Dietrich at least had the grace to colour before replying, "Okay, maybe that was a poor choice of words-"
"Damn right."
The medtech arched an eyebrow. "If you're like this often, it's no wonder someone took a pot shot at you."
The other mimicked her action and tone perfectly.
"Oh, I'm so sorry. I have passed out on a strange planet, and woken up in a bed which - judging from the décor - either belongs to a man or a lesbian and I'm completely unarmed. Forgive me for being anything less than perfectly composed." She took a deep breath. "Look, maybe you can help me. I'm looking for someone called Hicks. You know where I can find him?"
Dietrich hesitated for the briefest of instants before replying. "Who's asking?"
"My name is Exxen Tanner." The words carried a subtle and peculiar emphasis, as though there was some hidden message there.
If there was, it completely eluded the medtech, who puzzled over it for a few minutes before shrugging slightly and saying, "Exxen? What, is that short for something?"
"Yes...but...I don't know what." For a second, Tanner's face changed completely, a lost expression replacing the more normal tautness and making her look strangely vulnerable, then it was gone so fast that Dietrich couldn't help wondering if she'd imagined it. "I notice you took my tags as well."
The medtech couldn't quite meet those piercing eyes. "Yeah. We thought you might strangle on them."
"And you were curious."
It wasn't a question. Dietrich hesitated, then nodded once, slowly. "Yeah," she said again. "I've seen plenty of dog tags, but never ones like those. What's the chip on the back?"
"Planetary ID. You put it into a scanner and it projects a 3D hologram of the world it's keyed to. Atthiras, in this case."
Dietrich ran the name Atthiras through her mind and drew a blank. Probably some obscure colony. "Mind if we take a look?"
Tanner shrugged. "Go ahead. I don't know if it'll work with your technology, but you can try. I've no use for 'em now anyway. And yes, they're disease free."
Dietrich shifted. "Okay, I'm sorry about that. It's just...your skin...your eyes."
"Oh, that." Tanner shrugged again. "I spent some time on Atthiras, like I said. The scientists installed a planetary shield to control the people who come in and go out. I don't understand the physics of it, but something about it affects the sun's rays; if you live there, you tan grey-brown instead of gold-brown."
"And your eyes?"
"Same thing. It sort of darkens the skin and lightens the eyes." Another shrug. "You should see some of the people who grew up there; there's almost no colour left at all."
"I'll pass," Dietrich told her flatly. "How are you feeling?"
Tanner considered, running down a mental checklist.
"Well...my hip hurts, I'm a little dehydrated, bloody starving and my ribs are pretty painful, although not too bad. As far as they're concerned, I should be back on form in a week or two. Temperature's stable, and so far no sign of infection. So apart from the bullet wound and a couple of cracked ribs, I'm feeling pretty much normal."
"And the dehydration and starvation part of your spiel?" Dietrich said with biting sarcasm.
"I said normal, not good. I don't think I'm going to collapse again just yet, if that's what's worrying you." Tanner stretched, wincing as the action pulled on her ribs, then fixed the medtech with a calm stare. "Now, getting back to the original topic, is there someone called Hicks here or not?"
Briefly, Dietrich considered bluffing, then met Tanner's clear stare, saw the faint warning in those amber eyes and decided to hedge her bets.
"There is, yeah. What makes you think he's the one you're looking for?"
Tanner returned Dietrich's gaze calmly, steadily. "I don't know, so I'll elaborate. I'm looking for Corporal Dwayne Hicks, late of the USCM and just returned from Acheron. Do you know him or not?"
Spunkmeyer stared at Ruin's tattoo.
"What...?" he managed, after a somewhat lengthy struggle.
"Personally, I wouldn't have said Acheron was all that dark," Ruin said pensively. "A little dark, sure, but plenty dark? Anyway, you and Ferro spent most of your time on the landing pad, and that at least was well-lit."
"How...?"
"And just for the record, you can kill bugs at close range, Dan. You have to use a flamethrower, but it works fine."
"Where...?"
"You can also see them in the dark, if you know exactly what to look for."
There was a short pause.
"Who the fuck are you working for?" Spunkmeyer said at the end of it.
"That's on a want to know basis, Dan, and you don't want to know. Trust me. The less I tell you, the easier things'll be for you."
The rattle of the mailbox cut the young man's retort off, and both of them looked over to the front door.
"Good, it's here." Ruin turned away from Spunkmeyer rather abruptly - his questions had been getting a little too direct and awkward for her liking, and she didn't know what had possessed her to show him that tattoo in the first place - and went into the front hall.
"What've you got?"
"Daily paper," Ruin answered, picking it up and bringing it into the living room. "I'm going to fix some breakfast, and then I want to see if the ad's appeared yet." She tossed it onto the coffee table and went through into the kitchen, rummaging around in the fridge. Curious now, Spunkmeyer picked up the paper and flipped through it until he got to the classifieds.
"Yeah, it's here." He shook his head. "You don't really think this is gonna work, do you?"
Ruin's voice drifted out to him from the kitchen. "Do you have a better idea? At least this way it might help us flush someone out."
"Yeah? Like who?" Spunkmeyer turned the page, more for something to do than anything, then abruptly laughed.
"What?" Ruin said, somewhat edgily.
"The Company's giving a formal dinner, semi-fancy dress. In the 'interests of shared knowledge', it says here." The dropship crew chief snorted. "Who the fuck are they kidding?"
Ruin stood framed in the kitchen doorway for a long time, fingers drumming against her lips thoughtfully.
"Perfect," she said eventually, then rummaged in her bag before pulling out a comb and dragging it through her hair. Spunkmeyer watched her, somewhat nonplussed. Ruin had never taken any feminine interest in her appearance before.
"What are you doing?" he said bluntly.
"Correction, Dan; what are we doing." Ruin smiled at Spunkmeyer's reflection in the mirror, an action which caused him to forget about any insignificant concerns he might have been thinking of voicing. "And in answer to your question," Ruin went on, now holding her hair up in different positions to see which flattered her the most, "we are going to gatecrash that dinner."
Spunkmeyer's jaw dropped. "We?"
"Yes, we. I can handle a lot of things, but social graces and etiquette are not in my repertoire."
Spunkmeyer laughed in disbelief. "And you think they're in mine? Fuck that!" He shook his head. "I was a colony brat for the first part of my life and in and out of care homes for the second. I don't know how to act at some fancy dinner! I don't even have anything to wear."
Ruin blinked.
"That's probably the weirdest thing I've ever heard a man say." When the dropship crew chief continued to glare at her, arms folded obstinately across his chest, Ruin rolled her eyes. "Look, it's semi-fancy dress, so go down the barracks and borrow fatigues off someone."
"And when they ask for our invitation? What're you planning to say; it got lost in the mail?"
"You get the costume. I'll deal with the invitation. By the time I'm done, we'll be the guests of honour."
Spunkmeyer stared helplessly at her for a few minutes, then shook his head. "It's never going to work. You'll never be able to convince them that you belong there and neither will I!"
"Well, not with that attitude you won't," Ruin said tartly. "Look, you don't have to talk politics or philosophy or any of that shit. I just need an escort to stop any single men swooping down on me."
"You really think they would?" Spunkmeyer said.
"You do, Dan. And I think I'd rather not take the chance."
The dropship crew chief stepped forward and actually went so far as to physically take Ruin by the shoulders and turn her around to face him.
"Aren't you listening? You don't stand a cat in hell's chance of fitting in."
"No?" Ruin smiled sweetly up at him. "Why's that, Dan?"
Spunkmeyer swallowed once or twice. It was suddenly very hard to concentrate.
"People are gonna want to meet us. What'm I supposed to say? Oh, hi, my name's Dan Spunkmeyer and this is Ruin. I don't know her real name or even if she has one; she just turned up one day and got me to smuggle her onto Gateway for some kind of secret mission?"
Ruin raised her eyebrows. "Well, firstly I'd leave out the part about the secret mission. Secondly, if a name's the only problem, I'll think of one."
"And when I slurp my soup and eat with the wrong fork and commit a lot more social screw-ups?"
"Don't." When Spunkmeyer's glare shifted from merely irritated to out-and-out homicidal, Ruin shrugged. "You're a Marine. A grunt. You're supposed to be socially inept. That's in character. I've got the hard job; I have to somehow find out who knows where Newt is and then convince him or her to talk to me about it."
Spunkmeyer raised a derisive eyebrow. He'd lost and he knew it but male pride still prompted him to go down fighting.
"I am not dressing up like some fucking idiot and going to some fucking dinner given by some fucking retard in a suit just to find some fucking kid!"
"I don't want you to dress up like some fucking idiot," Ruin shot back, not missing a beat. "I want you to dress up like some fucking soldier. That, at least, shouldn't be too hard."
Spunkmeyer took a deep breath. "Alright. But I want a different name!"
"I don't blame you."
"Funny, I don't think. It's not a very common name and there might be people there who'd make the connection between me and Hicks."
Ruin shrugged. "Good point. Okay. Pick a name. And you'll need to bleach your hair as well."
"What?"
"People might recognise you. Last I checked, the USCM didn't allow grunts to attend parties on its behalf. I know you're retired, but I'm still not willing to take that chance."
"The USCM doesn't allow its grunts to dye their hair, either!" Spunkmeyer shook his head. "Look at me. I'm not a natural blonde and with my complexion there's no way I'll be able to convince them that I am!"
Ruin grimaced. "Alright then, pick the colour yourself! It's not like there's much of it to dye, after all."
"I'm not cutting it shorter."
"I don't think you can cut it shorter." Ruin considered. "Do the USCM allow facial hair?"
"Not for grunts, no."
"Right. How d'you fancy being a sergeant?"
"I don't! And I think I missed the whole part where I agreed to any of this!"
"You agreed when you flew me here."
"I agreed to be your pilot, Ruin, not your fucking rent boy!"
"That's alright, Dan. My having sex with you was never on the cards." Ruin flashed him a dazzling smile. "Can you get the clothes or not? Because if you can't, just say so and I'll have someone get some for you."
Spunkmeyer took a deep breath. "You know, I get the feeling you're really not listening to a word I say."
"What?"
"I said-" Spunkmeyer began angrily, then stopped. "Oh right. Yeah. Very funny."
"I thought so." Ruin shook her head. "Look, either you get something to wear or I'll get it myself. I thought you'd rather pick for yourself."
"What's wrong with what I'm wearing now?"
"A pair of briefs? You were planning to go like that?"
Spunkmeyer shut up. For about half a second. "What about the invitations?"
"I told you, Dan; I'll take care of it. You get the clothes." Ruin plonked herself down on the couch, then reached out for her pad and started writing.
"What are you doing?"
"Just a few little notes. A checklist, if you like." She glanced up at him. "Are you still here?"
"Yeah. Because so far, you haven't given me any good reason to go along with this or anything to make me believe that this party's going to give us any answers."
Ruin let her eyes unfocus very slightly. What would the Elite do in a situation like this? Her eyes snapped back into focus again and she grinned. Of course. She got to her feet and opened the front door, causing Spunkmeyer to back away slightly. The look on Ruin's face was unnerving him.
"Alright," Ruin said pleasantly. "You want a good reason to find some clothes? Allow me."
"What are you-hey! Hey, get off!" Spunkmeyer twisted out of Ruin's hold, only to get shoved hard through the door and into the corridor beyond. There was a click as Ruin slammed the door behind him and locked it, listening to the resulting stream of profanity with a smile. God, but that had been fun!
She waited a few minutes to make sure he wasn't about to try and break the door down, then picked up the phone and tapped in the number again, smiling slightly. Things were looking up.
"Yeah?"
Valmorgen again. Jesus, doesn't she ever sleep?
"It's me," Ruin said aloud. "I need a favour."
"Another one?"
"The Company's throwing a shindig. I think some of the top executives are going to be there, but it's invitation only."
"And you want to go join the party."
"I think it could help. Dan's out looking for something to wear, so you've got a little time. Drop it round as soon as, though; he's not the only one who has to organise an outfit." Ruin reached under her shirt and cupped her tags in one hand. "Maybe I should go as a Marine as well."
"That's down to you. When is this dinner?"
"Uh." Ruin hesitated. "I'm not sure. It's mentioned in today's paper though; surely you can find it?"
"Hold on." Valmorgen sounded distinctly put out. There was the buzz that signified being put on hold, and Ruin sat down to wait. She supposed she should have got Spunkmeyer to tell her when and where this dinner was supposed to be, but something inside her wanted to keep her illiteracy secret, at least for the minute.
The buzzing stopped abruptly and Valmorgen came back on the line.
"Okay, got it. Tomorrow night at office block 6A. Starts at eight pm, finishes at midnight. Food and drink supplied. Invitation only, like you said. Shouldn't be too hard to get hold of; a couple of our guys are high enough up in Weyland-Yutani to get an invite. We'll make a copy."
"Two copies."
There was a short silence, then Valmorgen said, "I didn't hear that."
"I said two copies!"
"Are you sure you're not getting a little too friendly with this guy?"
Ruin rolled her eyes. She supposed paranoia was normal enough when you were in a strange place and working for someone like the Elite, but Spunkmeyer had lost his case with her when he'd tried to impress her with that story about Acheron.
"For god's sake! You do your job and leave me to do mine, okay? Get me to that party, and let me do what needs to be done."
She slammed the phone down just as the doorbell rang. Swearing viciously in as many languages as she knew (which was a lot, at least when it came to profanity) Ruin crossed over and opened the door, saw the person standing there and very nearly slammed it shut again.
Fuck! This really wasn't what I had in mind!
"Can I help you?" she said, striving to keep her voice pleasant and having the horrible feeling that she wasn't doing a very good job of it.
"I saw the ad. I'm looking for Hicks."
Yeah, I just bet you are, Ruin thought, mind whirling rapidly in an effort to find a way out of this.
"Apone, isn't it?" she said aloud. "Why don't you come in?"
Dietrich dropped her bowl in the sink and leaned against the worksurface. "Well, that was a turnup for the books."
Hudson, who had been about to take a bite out of the sandwich he and Hicks had been arguing about earlier, stopped.
"What is?"
"Our guest has woken up. Really woken up," Dietrich added. The speed of Tanner's reaction was still fresh in her mind. "She wants to see you." The medtech glanced at Hicks, who looked surprised but not too concerned. "She's asking for you by name."
Hicks blinked. "Me? How could she know my name? I've never met her."
"Maybe she heard me yelling it just before she passed out," Dietrich said with a shrug. "Or maybe she heard it while she was unconscious; we're still not sure how much people can pick up when they're out. Whatever the reason, she wants you."
Hicks shook his head. "There must be some mistake."
"Oh no." Now Dietrich was smirking ever so slightly. "No, she said something about wanting to see Corporal Dwayne Hicks, late of the USCM and just returned from Acheron."
Hicks almost dropped his glass, now staring at her openly. "She said what?"
"Yeah." Dietrich sat down and stretched out, running tired hands through her hair. "I think you better get in there right now, don't you?"
Hicks started towards the stairs, stopped and came back. "Did you get her name?"
"She goes by Tanner, dunno if it's her real name or not." Dietrich paused. "Can't quite make her out, to tell you the truth, Dwayne."
"Is she contagious?"
"Well, not the mystery bit, no."
Hicks rolled his eyes. "You said you'd know more about her health when she woke up. She's awake. So what about her skin?"
"Oh, that." Dietrich shrugged. "Yeah, I asked her. Apparently it's to do with some kind of planetary shield or something they have back where she comes from. We get tanned brown, they get tanned brownish grey."
"It's not dangerous, then?"
"Well, not unless you paid this home of hers a visit. I can't vouch for what this shield does to the UV rays. In herself, she said she feels pretty good."
Hicks glanced at the door, then back at the medtech. "Yeah? So why'd she collapse?"
Dietrich shrugged again.
"Exhaustion. Blood loss. Malnutrition, although like I said, that's not too bad. I'd say she was eating well enough until she got shot. And speaking of which-" the medtech grabbed the sandwich almost from out of Hudson's mouth and handed it to Hicks "-you can take this up to her when you go."
Hicks lifted the top slice and peered at it, then stared at Hudson, who was still looking at his now empty hand in a puzzled fashion. "Man, how much pickle did you put in this thing?"
The comtech shifted defensively. Hudson's love of the local pickle was rapidly becoming legendary. "Enough."
"Way she's looking now, I doubt she'll care," Dietrich informed both men caustically, then handed Hicks a glass of water. "Give her that as well; she said she felt a little dehydrated."
Hicks hesitated in the doorway. "Is she...uh...safe?"
Dietrich raised her eyebrows.
"I don't think she's gonna try and murder you, Dwayne." Just as well, really, the medtech thought, since if their guest's combat reflexes were half as good as her everyday ones, even Hicks probably wouldn't have won a fight against her.
Then again, if Tanner got hold of those grenades, it probably wouldn't even come to that.
It was late the next morning when Vasquez finally came out of her room again. Newt was sitting on the couch with a pint glass containing a golden-yellow liquid, crushed ice and three straws. The smartgun operator didn't have to sample the drink to know what it was; the fridge had been well-stocked with apple and elderflower juice.
That really had unnerved Vasquez, although she'd never admit it. She'd developed a passion for the stuff when she'd been even younger than Newt and had, on more than one occasion, spent the money that was supposed to go on laundry on a carton of juice instead and drunk it all in one of the less frequented alleyways near her home. It wasn't a taste she admitted to indulging - and besides, she hadn't seen the stuff since she'd been imprisoned five years ago - and it wasn't the kind of thing you had as a standby either. Someone had really done their homework on her, and the smartgun operator didn't like to think about who, or how they'd found out. She hadn't touched the stuff either, preferring to live on water, and the juice had stayed in the fridge until Newt had showed up, tasted it for the first time and promptly developed an addiction to rival even Vasquez'.
The smartgun operator glanced around the living room. Gorman was nowhere to be seen. Big surprise there.
"Where's the lieutenant?" Vasquez' voice was unusually quiet, almost hoarse. Newt glanced at her.
"Hiding. He wouldn't tell me where he was going but I think he's at Char's. She's probably the only person who'd have him. Vaz, are you okay?"
"What? Yes, of course I am! Why shouldn't I be?" The smartgun operator cursed mentally, realising she'd answered a little too quickly and too vehemently, but pride forced her to stick to her story. "I'm fine."
Newt shrugged. "Okay, I guess what I really meant was, are you gonna get mad at anyone? 'Cause if you are, I'm gonna go seal myself into my bedroom."
Vasquez raised a withering eyebrow. "Oh, so you've got a welding torch now."
Newt hesitated, then said, "Well...I'll push a chair against the door then!"
The woman rolled her eyes. "What, you think I'm mad at you?"
Newt picked absently at the arm of the couch as she answered matter-of-factly, "No, I think you jus' like to take it out on me 'cause you know I can't get you back or say anything without being chucked out, and I need this place until Hicks arrives."
Nice, Vaz. First Gorman, now the kid. Seems everyone's after telling you a few home truths these days. Vasquez' hand curled into a fist, then she opened it again with a supreme effort. Newt was seriously starting to bug her. Yeah? What's really bugging you; the fact that she said it or the fact that she's right?
The smartgun operator opened her mouth, then closed it again. For once, she honestly didn't know what to say.
"Vaz?"
Relieved that Newt was seemingly willing to let the subject drop, Vasquez looked over at her. "Yeah?"
Newt's mouth opened and closed for a few minutes before finally saying, "If I ask you how old you are, do you promise not to get mad?"
Vasquez blinked. "Why the hell would you want to know that?"
Newt shifted her weight.
"'Cause...well, I was talking with Gorman yesterday'n'I asked him why you were so mad at him an' he said it was 'cause it had all got on top of you an' you were really young to have to deal with shit like that. He said shit, not me," Newt added hastily, although as far as Vasquez was concerned, the kid could turn the air blue twenty four seven and she wouldn't give a fuck. Blithely unaware of this, Newt continued. "So I was jus' wondering how old you were 'cause you don't look all that young."
"Thanks. Now I feel really good." Vasquez shook her head. "What did Gorman say about my age again? I don't think I heard you right."
"That you were too young to be in this situation," Newt repeated patiently. "So how-"
"Twenty, not that it's any of your business." Vasquez took a deep breath. "And it's definitely nothing to do with that piece of officer shit. Did he say anything else before he left? Like where he was going, for example?"
Newt took a huge slurp of juice, then hoovered around the bottom of the glass with the straws.
"Yf, hn sd..." She spat out the straws and frowned as she tried to remember. "Something like...uh...how he didn't want to be around when you stopped sulking-"
"When I what?"
"Yeah, an' then he said he was gonna throw himself on someone else's mercy since there was precious little of it to be found around here."
"So? He knows I ain't running a fucking hotel!"
Newt shrugged. "'S jus' what he said. Don't blame your gun 'cause the target's too small."
"The-" Vasquez broke off and stared at the girl, momentarily jerked out of her mood. "That doesn't even make any sense."
The girl shrugged again. "He said he'd be back later. I dunno when he meant though. You could try going round to Char's."
The smartgun operator snorted. "No thanks. I've only just cleared the crap out my lungs from last time." She shook her head. "The bastard'll have to come back here sooner or later."
Newt opened her mouth to ask exactly what the woman planned to do to Gorman, but at that point the mini-visiphone buzzed, silencing the girl and dragging Vasquez out of her wistful daydream involving the lieutenant, a flamethrower and a two gallon container of petrol.
The smartgun operator sat down at the table to answer it, saw who was calling and took a deep breath.
"Charmaine, I really am not in the mood for our usual debate about self-defence lessons right now. Piss off!"
Charmaine blew a plume of smoke at the screen. "Not yet. I was calling to see if Newt was okay."
Vasquez tensed, suddenly defensive. "Of course she's okay. Why do you ask?"
The older woman shrugged. "You got a hell of a temper on you, Vasquez. Gorman said you lost it with him-"
"I did not 'lose it' with him; if I had, he would have had to fucking crawl to your place. I take it that is where he slithered to?"
Charmaine met her gaze squarely, unperturbed. "It was, yeah. He's on his way back now. I just thought that since you were furious with him and he'd gone somewhere-"
"Just...stop." The smartgun operator held up a hand. Whether it was the action or the ice in her voice that cut Charmaine off, she was never quite sure, but it did the trick. Vasquez continued to stare at her with an expression the older woman hadn't seen on her before; one that seemed to be comprised of contempt and loathing. The contempt she was already used to - it seemed to be Vasquez' normal state of mind - but loathing was something entirely new, and Charmaine didn't much like it. For the first time, she found herself wondering what it would be like to have Vasquez for an enemy.
The smartgun operator continued, her tone now deadly soft. "You thought what, Ashton? That if I couldn't get hold of Gorman to beat the shit out of him, I'd turn around and beat it out of the kid instead?"
Charmaine didn't quite meet her gaze. "Something like that. You've said often enough you don't want her around, after all."
"There's one big fucking difference between not wanting her around and kicking seven kinds of crap out of her just because I've had a bad day! Neither of my parents wanted me around," -when they were straight and sober enough to want anything, she added in the privacy of her own mind "-but I'll say this much; neither of them ever laid a hand on me or my sisters."
"All the more reason why I should worry about her, Vasquez, since you obviously don't. Your new roommate admitted that much. He was the one suggested I call you."
"Was he now?" Vasquez said tightly. That was something she thought she'd have to talk to Gorman about, soon. Like sometime during the next five minutes.
"He said he'd have done it himself, but he didn't want to make things worse. Vasquez, I want-"
The smartgun operator cut the connection abruptly, then spun around to face Newt, who was doing her best not to giggle.
"I'm glad you find it funny," Vasquez said acidly.
"I'm sorry," Newt said, through hands plastered over her mouth, "I jus'...who'd be dumb enough to believe something like that?" She picked up her empty glass. "Are you gonna go in the bathroom?"
"What?" Vasquez frowned slightly, still absorbed with the lieutenant, then glanced up at Newt again. "Oh. No. You want a bath, you go right ahead."
"Can I take another drink in there with me?"
"You do what you want, kid. I ain't your fucking mother."
Newt grinned happily and trooped off into the kitchen, re-emerging a few mintues later with another full glass of juice and ice. A few minutes later, the bathroom door clicked shut behind her and Vasquez heard both taps being turned on full. Just as well, really; despite her last comment to Newt, the smartgun operator didn't think it would be a good idea for the kid to be around when Gorman did finally crawl back in.
Sitting down on the couch, Vasquez turned on the TV and flicked through the channels, not looking for anything in particular, finally settling for a chat show renowned for the violence of its participants.
One of these had just smashed his chair on the stage and was attempting to stab someone else with it when the door slid open and Gorman stepped in, shooting Vasquez a somewhat apprehensive look.
"Are you still angry?"
A year ago, the thought of a Marine officer being afraid of her would have filled Vasquez with a strange sort of pride. Now, though, she just found it one hell of an inconvenience.
"What do you think?" she said flatly.
The lieutenant continued eyeing her warily before saying, "I think I'll go chat with the kid for an hour or two."
"You'll find that hard."
Gorman paused in the middle of the floor and whirled to face the woman, no longer afraid. "Vasquez, if you've hurt or done anything to that child because of what I said to you-"
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Vasquez erupted, her sudden fury enough to silence a braver man than Gorman. Did everyone have such a low opinion of her? "Alright, so there have been times when I've wanted to shake that kid until her teeth rattled, but I'm not fucking pathetic enough to blame her for your screwup! Newt is fine; I haven't touched her in any way, shape or form since she arrived bar that little incident with Dalton, and I don't want to fucking touch her either, because there are some lines even I won't cross! Personally, I'd be more worried about leaving her alone with you."
There was a hot, angry silence, then Gorman said in a voice of iron control, "Just what is that supposed to mean?"
"You're the one with the college education, lieutenant. You work it out."
Gorman lunged at her, seizing her by the shoulders and running her into the wall. "You really think-"
"No," Vasquez cut across. She slammed both knuckles onto the pressure point at the back of the man's hands, anger lending her greater strength than normal, and Gorman jerked away, wincing. "But it ain't nice to be accused, is it?"
There was a short, embarrassed silence. "No," Gorman said eventually, "it's not. I'm sorry."
"Sure you are."
"I just thought...and when you said I couldn't talk to Newt-"
"You can't talk to Newt because she's in the fucking bath, Gorman! If you still want to try, go ahead, but don't say I didn't warn you."
"No," Gorman said again. "It's...I'll wait. Look, Vasquez, I really am sorry for what I said earlier. I was upset."
"You were upset! How the fuck do you think I felt?"
There was a somewhat startled silence, and Vasquez realised suddenly that she'd said too much.
Great. There goes your cold goddess of death persona, Vaz, along with any chance of respect. Thank fuck the kid wasn't around to see it go.
"You weren't the one the Company picked for their sick little questioning methods," Gorman pointed out. Something in that struck him and he smiled bitterly.
"What's funny?" Vasquez demanded.
"Just...you know, this really isn't how I imagined my life after I graduated."
The smartgun operator raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Yeah? Beats me why someone like you even wanted to become an officer in the first place."
"Why?" Gorman shrugged. "It was that or enlist as a grunt. I figured if I was gonna have to risk my life every day for people I'd never even met, I wanted to start as close to the top as I could get and at least get a decent salary."
"Yeah," Vasquez muttered. "You were on...what? Thirty thousand a year?"
"Thirty two. Look, I thought we were supposed to be discussing what we want to do about the Company."
"You already know what I want to do about the fucking Company."
"Yes, Vasquez, I do," Gorman said heavily, "since you mentioned and elaborated on the subject in extensive detail a number of times on our walk from the labs to your apartment. Unfortunately, the acquisition and subsequent crossbreeding of piranhas and electric eels was banned by the Horland Convention two hundred and thirty years ago, even if it does present a rather...intriguing mental image."
"Would it be too much to ask if you could talk like the rest of us once in a while?" Vasquez said sarcastically. "You did it once, so I'm sure you can manage it again."
Gorman rolled his eyes.
"You'd never get a piranha and electric eel to have it off and even if you did you'd be arrested before you could do anything else! Is that better? I could try it in Spanish if you think that would help, though I haven't spoken it since high school and my teacher said that he actually found me easier to understand when I spoke in English."
Vasquez shook her head. "I sometimes wonder if they teach officers to be that fucking long-winded on purpose," she said bluntly.
Gorman sighed. "Yeah, I know. My father always wanted to know what the point was of his paying for my education in the academy if I kept talking like some dumb grunt." He glanced at Vasquez. "No offence."
The smartgun operator snorted. "Let me guess; your father was a Marine officer as well."
"Army, actually. He always thought the Colonial Marines did nothing more than lounge around in hypersleep."
"Right..." Vasquez frowned slightly, her own curiosity stirring again. "So why'd you join 'em?"
"Honestly?" The lieutenant shrugged. "Like I said, I was an army brat. It was always assumed I'd go into the military in some form or another, and in at the top. I wasn't interested in any of the armed forces, but my father wasn't interested in what I had to say on the subject either." He shrugged again. "He was always very outspoken against the USCM, so I made up my mind that if I had to go into any of the military forces, it would be that one. He didn't much like it, but there was nothing he could do. We haven't spoken since I started basic."
"So you picked the toughest force in existence because you didn't want to enlist at all?" Vasquez snorted. "Where's the fucking sense in that?"
Gorman shrugged again. "I was only eighteen at the time. It was the closest I could get to actual rebellion."
Vasquez stared at him for a few minutes, then abruptly grinned.
"What?"
"You as a rebel. That's what." She shook her head. "There ain't no laws saying you have to follow your family's every half-footstep."
"There are if that family happens to be supplying your board and lodging. Basically I could either go in as a high-paid officer, or take off on my own stacking shelves in some supermarket or working in some deadend office."
Vasquez snorted. "With the grades you must've got? Yeah, right. You know your trouble, Gorman? You never lived in the real world. Until recently, if you wanted something, you handed over your cashcard and walked away with it the very next day. You let your folks pay your way and now you've no idea how to survive on your own."
Gorman tensed. He didn't want to get embroiled in another argument with Vasquez, particularly not now she seemed to be speaking to him again, but something in the woman's open contempt stung him to the quick.
"I worked, thank you very much. I had a weekend job in a department store." Even as he said it, he felt it sounded somewhat pathetic, and Vasquez' rejoinder did nothing to alleviate this.
"Yeah? One of my friends had something similar. Course, she'd lied about her age to get it, and wound up working twelve hour shifts six days a week in order to earn enough to buy food for her and her kid brother. Why did you really take that weekend job, Gorman? Pocket money?"
"Er..." The lieutenant squirmed slightly. "More or less." He felt like adding that he'd wanted to experience life in the real world, but found he couldn't face the blistering scorn this would no doubt engender.
Vasquez snorted. "Right. So you decided to take a sip from the rancid cesspit of reality."
"That's strangely poetic of you, Vasquez. Disgusting, but poetic." Gorman paused. "And it doesn't help in our current situation either."
The smartgun operator rolled her eyes. "Look. We have the airducts. They have bugs. We just wait until they lose control - which they probably will - and crawl through the airducts to a hangar, steal a ship and get the fuck outta here."
Gorman raised his eyebrows. "So you're planning to just sit back and let them get killed by the bugs? Go ahead. Let's see how cold and rational you are when it turns out to be your own sister you have to sacrifice."
Vasquez narrowed her eyes, trying to ignore the sudden spike of fear the lieutenant's words had ignited. "What do you know about my sister, Gorman?"
"She's in the corps. I know she is; I heard her name mentioned by some prick with acne and if that wasn't enough, I saw her myself."
Vasquez snorted. "Yeah? And how the fuck would you recognise her?"
"Easily," Gorman said calmly, refusing to be put off. "Firstly, she looks like a more delicate version of you. Secondly, I overheard her arguing with some of her platoon and she sounds like you as well, right down to the Spanish expletives." He paused. "What exactly does chingate, pendejo atrasado mean, anyway? I don't think we covered it in high school."
"Fuck you, you retarded prick."
The lieutenant looked hurt. "I was only asking!"
Vasquez sighed. "No, that's what it means." She paused. "Funny though...Carmen never went in for any of that when we were kids."
"And you did?"
"Oh yeah, every chance I got. You got no street cred if you didn't mouth off to all and sundry."
Gorman arched an eyebrow."So you were one of those who thinks it's big and clever to talk like a trooper when you're about ten years old?"
"Ten?" Vasquez snorted. "Hey man, if I'd waited until I was ten, I'd've been marked down as beyond pathetic. I started the moment I was old enough to speak." She shrugged. "All our family did. It was normal."
The lieutenant shook his head. "It just seems rather pathetic to me, that's all."
"Yeah?" The smartgun operator snorted again. "Like someone like you'd understand it. You people've never gone hungry in your lives."
Gorman stared hard at her. "Don't you think it's a little pointless right now to keep on playing these games?" he said sharply. "So I'm not your favourite person in all the universe. After the fiasco on Acheron I can't say I really blame you for that-"
"How kind."
"-but this whole 'grunts vs officer' thing is getting very old very fast, especially if we're going to be roommates or cellmates or whatever you want to call it." Gorman took a deep breath. "So. I'm going to say this once, and once only, and I'm going to be as nice and polite about it as I possibly can. Fucking grow up!"
He had to admit, it was almost worth everything he'd suffered so far to see the stunned expression on the smartgun operator's face. They were taught in the academy to never raise their voices and to try and keep calm and reasonable at all times but, Gorman thought, the damn officers had never had to deal with the likes of the aliens before. Who were they to come and preach regs or ethical code in a combat situation?
Then he realised that this was NCO-thinking. More to the point, it was probably what had been going through the minds of his platoon on Acheron.
What the hell. Screw the academy and their damn conventions; I never wanted any of this in the first place.
And it still didn't get him any closer to solving the problem of the Company. With a sigh, Gorman picked up the latest paper and started to read, more for something to do than through any hope that it would help.
Exxen Tanner, planetary designation Raptor, was a pathological neophobe. People from her walk of life who weren't had roughly the same chances of survival as a snowball in a blast furnace. New things could and often did equate to new threats, ones whose behaviour patterns weren't known yet and therefore ones that you hadn't developed a defence for.
Of course, she was a very fast learner on that score, and she had a vast array of memories to draw on. Right now, she was trying to draw on the memory that could tell her about the hi-fi stereo. It was harder than she thought; she hadn't seen one in almost six years, and the one she was now looking at was subtly different to the ones they'd had back home.
Man, what I wouldn't give for a bit of rock and roll right about now.
The knock on the door brought her back down to earth and she turned, surprised. People rarely knocked, at least, not in her experience.
Outside in the corridor, Hicks hesitated, then opened the door and stepped in. If this...Tanner was asleep, then he could just leave the food and go. He wasn't sure if he wouldn't prefer that to talking to her; she seemed to know a hell of a lot more than he was comfortable with. She wasn't asleep, though, much to his private disappointment. Instead she was standing by Hudson's stereo system, seemingly absorbed in it.
The floorboard creaked under Hicks' foot and Tanner turned to look at him, causing the man to recoil instinctively. He couldn't help it. No human had eyes like that; the colour of hot amber, burning with intelligence.
"You're Corporal Dwayne Hicks?"
"Ex-Corporal Dwayne Hicks, yes," Hicks said pointedly, hoping this stranger would take the hint. "Dietrich said you wanted to talk to me. She also said that you'd mentioned other things to her."
Tanner took a deep breath. There was no turning back now. "Things like acid-blooded black bastards taking over a world called Acheron? That sort of thing?"
Hicks set the tray down on the table, never taking his eyes off her. "That sort of thing, yeah."
Tanner's eyes flicked to the food, then back to Hicks.
"Go ahead and eat," he told her. "You look hungry."
The girl returned her stare to the food. Tuna and some kind of pickle. Well, she'd eaten stranger combinations - although admittedly not many - and bread was a rare delicacy; people like her were lucky to get it more than once or twice a year. It was probably safe. After all, if they wanted her dead, chances were good they wouldn't be wasting their food on her.
Carefully, she reached out and took the plate, then lifted the sandwich and took a bite. It actually wasn't as bad as it smelled. Few things were, in Tanner's experience.
Hicks, due to a sense of delicacy and the fact that he didn't know what the hell this stranger wanted with him, waited until she'd finished before speaking.
"You want anything else?"
Tanner - who was already stuffed almost to bursting point - shook her head. She'd eaten more at that one sitting than she was used to getting in a day, unless she had a particularly successful series of hunts.
"So what did you want to speak to me about?" Hicks pressed.
"Plenty of things." Tanner took a mouthful of water. "You. Acheron. Newt. And a certain dark-haired drifter that I think we both know."
There was a short pause, which Tanner used to finish the water.
"You, uh, do you wanna talk about this downstairs?" Suddenly, Hicks found he didn't want to be alone with her, didn't want to hear whatever she'd come to say without some outside support, even if that support came from a nutty comtech and a spiteful medtech. It had to be better than hearing it alone.
Tanner hesitated, nervous. For the first time in years, she was in a place where other people had control of the situation, and she wasn't sure she liked the feeling. She wasn't even armed. And the thought of the people downstairs staring at her skin...it was a common enough colour for Atthiras, but even that medtech had thought she was diseased.
I'm not sure I'm strong enough for that. Not now. Later, maybe.
"We haven't opened yet," Hicks added, as though sensing the reason for her discomfort. "We were going to, but you showed up and..." He spread his hands to the side, smiling slightly.
Tanner found herself returning the smile. Something about this guy made her relax, which was so unusual in itself that she didn't want it to stop just yet. It was a nice feeling.
Get a grip, idiot! You're not here to screw!
"Alright," she said aloud. "But I want one of the back rooms."
Hicks shrugged. "Fine. Follow me."
He led her downstairs and into the kitchen, deliberately keeping his pace slow in an effort to accommodate Tanner's injuries.
"You're up?" Hudson said, startled, then, "I mean...up and about?"
"For now." Tanner pulled out a chair and dropped into it just before her leg buckled under her, Hicks seating himself just across from her. The girl glanced at him, then ran a hand through her hair, wincing at the snarls there. "Alright. You wanted me to talk this over with your friends in the room, fine. But if we're gonna have story time, I need a drink. A proper one, not water. What's the strongest you got?"
Hudson opened a cupboard and rummaged around in it for a few minutes before pulling out a bottle of the same pale pink liquid that Hicks had overindulged in on his first night on Tirand.
"Probably this stuff. If you're not used to it though-"
Tanner's hollow laugh cut him off midsentence. "I'm used to alchohol, don't you worry."
Hudson hesitated in the middle of looking for a glass and exchanged a look with Dietrich. "Are you a-"
"No," Tanner interrupted. "Just one drink and that's it. Trust me; I really am gonna need it, and I think you probably will too before I'm done."
Hudson glanced at Dietrich again. The medtech shrugged, meaning Go ahead, and the comtech filled a shot glass with the liquid, placing it down in front of Tanner and taking care to replace the bottle afterwards.
"Cheers." Tanner took a sip, grimacing slightly at the taste. "Alright. It's been a long time since I held a conversation with one person that lasted longer than about five minutes, never mind three people, and to be honest I'm not sure how to go about telling this particular story. So I think if it's okay with you, I'll just wing it and you can fire questions at me as and when you like." She took another sip and felt herself relax slightly. Hudson hadn't been kidding; this rose coloured water was some pretty powerful shit. "First of all, I want to talk to you about the girl, Ruin. I know she's been here recently; that's why I came by."
"Ruin?" Hicks' interest quickened. "You know her?"
"I did know her, yes."
"Why did she agree to help me?"
"Jesus, Dwayne, will you let the lady finish!" Hudson protested.
"Why did she agree to help me?" Hicks repeated doggedly, taking no notice of the comtech.
Tanner arched her eyebrows, raising the glass to her lips. "Maybe she felt you needed it."
Hicks grabbed the glass and slammed it down on the table hard enough to spill its contents over the rim. "Uh huh. And maybe you just happen to know the real reason!"
Tanner was about to bluff it out - through pure habit more than a desire to mislead Hicks - when she caught sight of the man's expression and thought better of it. Sucking on her fingers to capture the spilt alcohol, she nodded.
"Yeah, I do. I wasn't sure before, but I think - I think - I am now. I heard one or two things."
"About Ruin?" Hudson said eagerly. "What have you heard? Is she okay?"
"Oh, she's okay. The people she's working for won't let anything happen to her."
Across the table, Hicks hesitated. He wasn't sure he wanted to ask the next question. But still. "What people?"
"Ruin is working for an organisation called the Elite. I don't know what your equivalent would be...a combination of the USCM and Weyland-Yutani, I suppose. Only far more powerful. You can bet as much as you like that they've infiltrated both those organisations as well, on every conceivable level. I can't blame Ruin for doing what she's doing, but that doesn't mean I have to support it." Tanner shook her head. "Like I said, I knew Ruin from before. Not very well, but I knew her. We were friends for a while, then food got scarce and we started fighting over what little there was. Selfishness is the only thing that keeps you alive in a place like Atthiras, and most people never lose it. Ruin's only helping you because that serves the Elite's purpose, which in turn serves her own. Though to be honest, I didn't realise the Elite had sucked her into this until I saw her on Acheron."
"You were on Acheron?" Hicks said sharply.
Tanner ran a hand through her hair.
"The Elite picked us both up from Atthiras. After the time we'd both spent there, we felt we'd earned a little rest and relaxation, so we went along with them to your colony."
There was a silence.
"Let me get this straight," Dietrich said finally, speaking for the first time. "You could, by your own admission, pick damn near any world you wanted... and you decided that Acheron gave you the best chance for R&R?"
"Yes."
There was another, more reflective silence.
"Man, I don't think I'd like to see where you come from," Hudson said finally. Hicks shot a look at him and the comtech shut up obligingly.
"Do you know anything about this Elite?" Hicks said. "Their location? Their plans?"
"Not much," Tanner said ruefully. "I lost access to damn near everything when I helped your friends out. That was treason as far as the others were concerned."
"What friends?" Hudson demanded.
"Took the words right out of my mouth," Dietrich informed him pleasantly, then she frowned slightly, her gaze sharpening. "Show me your left arm," she said suddenly.
Tanner shot her a look, followed by a queer sort of half smile. "Alright. I can't pretend I wasn't waiting for that."
She shrugged out of the heavy leather jacket she was still wearing and offered her arm for inspection. The three of them stared. If there was any doubt in their minds as to the truth of Tanner's story, it was rapidly assuaged by the tattoo of an alien on her shoulder. Dietrich sat back slowly, almost as white as she'd been when she'd found the grenades. She supposed she must have seen the tattoo when she examined the girl, but it hadn't registered for some reason.
"It was you," she said hoarsely.
"Yeah." Tanner raised her eyebrows. "You don't look too pleased to see me again."
"Yeah, well, to be honest, I'm not. You took that facehugger. You're supposed to be dead."
"What?" Hudson stared from one to the other. "What facehugger? What're you talking about?"
Hicks, who was slightly faster on the uptake, stared hard at Dietrich. "Does this have anything to do with your mystery reappearance in Operations?"
Dietrich took a deep breath.
"Yeah, it does, alright? That bug grabbed me, I went out like a light and woke up in some kind of cell with the sarge and a bug egg. We could see people through the door - it was like the ones in Operations - and they were arguing about something. Someone opened the cell door, then someone else shut it. Before it closed completely, this person dived in with us. She literally stuffed her face in that egg, the door opened again - I think it was linked to the egg somehow - and me and the sarge got the fuck out." She paused for breath. "Now, can we change the subject...please?"
Tanner shrugged and pulled the jacket back on again. "Fine by me. You brought it up."
Hudson stared from one to the other. "Fuck! You took a facehugger for Cyn?"
"Yeah. It was a pretty common thing; they'd bring two people back, put them in with one egg and then see if the person still left alive would agree to join them. The guys working the labs that day were raw recruits who froze the instant the door opened, otherwise I'd never have got away with it. They operated on me, took out the bug, then stitched me back up again and we all left a few hours later."
Hicks glanced at Dietrich. "So what happened with you?"
The medtech shrugged, although she was still white and visibly shaken.
"Me and the sarge got the fuck out. What do you think? Nobody tried to stop us. I think they were too surprised that we were out and about." She turned her attention to Tanner. "And although I swore never, ever to do this, I agree with Will. Why'd you do it?"
Tanner stared wordlessly into her drink for a few minutes.
"I agreed to come with the Elite because they saved my life. That doesn't mean I agree with their methods. They're not usually like that though; we just had one hell of a shitty commander."
"Gorman," Hudson and Dietrich said in unison. Tanner snorted.
"Yeah, like him. Only worse."
Hicks took a deep breath. "Alright. Fine. But it still doesn't explain their interest in us."
Tanner shot him a look. "I can do that in four or five words; they're setting you up. They won't let the Company have you."
"Sounds alright to me," Hudson said bluntly.
"They're also being recalled in a few months, and their orders are not to let Weyland-Yutani get their hands on you under any circumstances. They're not allowed to take you back with them." Tanner shook her head. "There's only one way they can carry out their orders; kill you all. Once you and Newt and the others are all gathered here, they'll most likely drop a bomb on the place and be gone before the smoke clears."
Ruin's mind turned over, working faster than it ever had in her life. In the meantime, her survival instinct kicked in and she smiled.
"Come on in," she repeated.
Apone didn't move, didn't return the smile. "I came here looking for Hicks, kid, and you sure as hell ain't him."
Kid? Ruin tensed imperceptibly, then forced herself to relax. "I'm working for Hicks." Well, that was true enough. It just wasn't very accurate. "I placed the ad in the hopes that someone would come along."
"Bullshit." Apone said the word evenly, neutrally, refusing to take his eyes off her. "Who are you really, some kinda reporter? Is this some kind of crazy stunt to find out what went down on Acheron?"
It was on the tip of Ruin's tongue to tell him that she knew damn well what had gone down on Acheron, probably in a lot more detail than any of the Marines, but at that point her mind stopped turning, tapped her on the shoulder and presented her with its findings.
This man's dangerous. Get rid of him.
She hesitated. Her instinct for trouble was dormant - she didn't believe she was in any physical danger from Apone - but that was no reason to take chances.
Right. Look, if you came face to face with someone like this back home, you'd either hide and hope he didn't notice you or try to make him believe you were no threat to him. Hiding is completely out the question, so let's try the submission thing.
"I wasn't after you." That much at least was true, she thought sourly. Apone was someone who merited respect, and there was probably nobody Ruin hated coming up against more than people like that. Emotional or naïve people like Hicks and Hudson were far easier to manipulate. "To be honest, I'm not sure who I was expecting, except it damn well wasn't-" She broke off abruptly, staring at something past Apone's shoulder.
"Wasn't what?" Apone started to say, before he was cut off.
"Sarge?"
Both Ruin and Apone automatically turned towards the source of the voice. Spunkmeyer, wearing considerably more than he had been when Ruin had last seen him, was standing there, staring. Annoying as he was, at that moment Ruin could quite happily have kissed him...although judging from the killing stare the dropship crew chief was giving her, the feeling was less than mutual.
"I am going to fucking kill you," he said to Ruin, his voice unnaturally pleasant.
Ruin raised a mocking eyebrow. "Come on and try, Dan. I notice you at least managed to find some clothes."
Something in that seemed to unnerve the young man; Ruin hadn't seen him looking this shaken since they'd made their deal.
"Yeah. Yeah, I found 'em." He glanced at Apone. "So what're you doing here? Are you staying or going?"
The germ of an idea appeared in Ruin's mind and, like most ideas she had, she acted on it immediately and smiled at Apone. "Yes, come in. Please."
There was a long, stunned silence.
"Why?" Hicks said eventually. "Whatever's left on Acheron that they want, they can have it! We don't want a war."
"Neither do they. But they're gonna give you one, Hicks, because they can't risk leaving anyone who saw what you saw alive."
Hudson, who had had both feet up on the table for the majority of the conversation (much to Dietrich's disgust) suddenly swung them down again and leaned forward.
"What the fuck's it got to do with them? Look, they didn't want us to see the bugs, but we had no choice! If they're worried we're gonna have anything more to do with them or a shitty colony like Acheron - no offence, Dwayne - we fucking well ain't!"
Tanner shook her head.
"You still don't understand, do you? They don't want you dead because you saw the bugs. They want you dead because you could have seen the derelict where the bugs came from. And if you saw that, you could also have seen what else was inside. They're not going to take that chance, especially not with the kid. Wasn't it her family that first went there? And you, Hicks; they'd have hacked into your personnel file as well as everyone else's. Birthplace, Acheron, Alpha Centauri system. You could've seen it as well." She took a deep breath. "You can howl about the aliens all you want, but the fact remains that your colony was damned as soon as the first transport ship landed there."
Hicks lunged at her and seized her shoulders tightly, ignoring the hiss of pain as he jarred the girl's cracked ribs.
"What about Newt? What about her disappearance? Was your precious fucking Elite responsible for that as well?"
Tanner didn't move, didn't attempt to struggle.
"No. They want her dead, not vanished. If they'd found you and her - currently numbers one and two on their Most Wanted list - alone like that, they'd have just shot you. Whoever took Newt, it wasn't the Elite."
Hicks released her abruptly and slumped back into his seat. Tanner touched her rib gingerly, wincing as black pain shot through her side and up into her head.
"You wanna painkiller?" Hudson asked her. Tanner shook her head.
"No. I'm fine."
"You sure?"
"Positive. I don't do drugs."
"You don't do drugs?" Dietrich echoed scathingly. "Jesus, what kinda painkillers you think we got here?"
Tanner shook her head again. "Thanks, but no thanks. If there's something wrong with my body, I need to know about it."
Hicks ran a hand through his hair, and Tanner seriously doubted whether he'd heard any of the previous exchange.
"Why this elaborate scheme?" he said suddenly. "They must know where we are. Why didn't they just send someone to pick us off one at a time?"
Tanner shrugged.
"Because if they picked you off one at a time - and yes, they could - then you might twig. Some of you might go into hiding. The Elite has one potential weakness; it relies on people seeing other people. If you could find an uninhabited world, or area, you'd be out of their reach, and there's always the chance - however small - that one of you could get the better of whoever was sent to kill you. They're not going to take that chance. A blitz is nice and clean. No survivors."
Hicks surged to his feet, pacing angrily, hands snapping in and out of fists and then whirled. "This is goddamned nuts! I never saw that ship! None of us did!"
"The child did, Hicks. She never went inside, but that's not going to worry the Elite. They want to hush the whole thing up and that means not taking any chances. And you're as Acheronic as Newt is. The Elite aren't so worried about the others - although they want them dead too - but Newt's family went into that ship, and they could have talked to yours who might have passed it onto you. Or you could have seen it when you were a kid. I believe you didn't," Tanner added, as Hicks looked to be nearing explosion point again, "but they're not going to take that chance."
Hicks and Hudson exchanged glances.
"Are they like Burke?" Hicks asked. "Are they going to-"
"No," Tanner cut across. "At least, not in that way. They're not interested in helping or hurting the Company unless their own agenda is involved. And they really are not interested in doing anything with the aliens besides wiping them out. If they want you dead, you'll be dead, but at least it'll be quick. You're not gonna wake up with a facehugger."
"Tell that to the fucks on the ship," Dietrich muttered, not quite under her breath.
"That wasn't an execution. That was just recruitment, and like I said, it wasn't entirely above board either."
There was a silence.
"We got pensions," Hudson said suddenly. "Maybe we could come to some arrangement with this...Elite."
Hicks fixed the comtech with a steel gaze. "You do that if you like. I am not sending any money to the people who, if I understand this right, are responsible for wiping out my home!"
Tanner shook her head. "Noble sentiments, Hicks, but it wouldn't work anyway. Money isn't a problem for these guys. They collect hundreds of billions per month. Even the Company can't hope to match that, so I doubt any of you could."
There was a stunned silence.
"Man, I'm in the wrong fucking job," Hudson said eventually. "How'd they get that much?"
"Taxation," Tanner said with a shrug. "Every world under Elite protection pays tax. Every inhabitant that's classed as a legal adult and who has a source of income has to pay a dollar a month taxes."
Hicks raised his eyebrows. "That hardly seems excessive."
"I know. That's why so few people duck out of it. End result, one world nets about two or three billion per month, at least. And these people control over three hundred worlds."
Hicks shook his head. "How? How the fuck can people like that get in charge? More importantly, how do they stay in charge?"
"They're not invaders, Hicks. They're...guards, I suppose you could call them." Tanner shrugged. "There's no rule saying any of the worlds have to ask for their protection, and the Elite doesn't approach any either. But it's the only one offering its services, so most worlds take them up on it."
"Yours included?"
"Mine?" Tanner turned a piercing look on Hicks. "Atthiras is a pleasure world. It's one of the very few places where the Elite are banned from interfering or even visiting." She considered. "Not that it matters; they can always find a way in if they want. They don't have a uniform, so unless they waved their ID cards in the guard's face, they wouldn't be challenged, and they're rich enough to pay their way out again. How d'you think they got me and Ruin out?" Tanner shook her head. "Ruin might be looking for Newt, but that's only a secondary mission. She wants to find the other Acheron survivors and then get them to a place where the Elite can deal with them cleanly. Hudson gave her the perfect target. She'll send everyone here, just like she did you, Hicks."
"She didn't send me. Hudson called and said he'd heard my name mentioned by a group of campers."
"Didn't you ever wonder where he got your number from?"
Hicks stared at her, then turned his attention on Hudson, who shrugged.
"They said you'd given them the card and they passed it on to me."
"I didn't give them anything, Will, except a jumpstart."
"Which changes everything, really," Tanner said matter-of-factly. "It's not like the Elite to be so underhanded and subtle, at least, not for something like this. They could have just shot you and Newt out the air. I think there's something more behind all this."
Hicks and Hudson exchanged looks.
"Tell me," Hicks said eventually.
"I think there's more than one group of people trying to cover things up." Tanner raised a hand, forestalling Hicks' next question. "I don't know who. To be honest, I've no evidence other than my own instincts, but they're not usually wrong. I don't know who took Newt, but in an ironic sort of way they did you a favour. If they hadn't split you up, the Elite would have killed you both by now. As it is, they'll let you both live for the minute in the hopes that one of you will lead them to the other. I think the Elite are searching for the kid just as avidly as you are. They don't know where she is, which means she must be in some pretty high-security place, because there aren't many companies and facilities the Elite can't get into if they put their minds to it."
Hicks shook his head. "Why are you telling us all this?"
"Because you need to understand. Ruin has nothing against you, Hicks, not personally. In fact, I think she respects you for what you did. But she rode out with the Elite to find this ship, and since she's not an official member, they're not going to take her back unless she helps them tie up some of their loose ends."
There was a long, long silence.
"What loose ends?" Hudson said eventually. "What's Ruin gonna do?"
"What she promised," Tanner said candidly. "She's gonna go out, find Newt, bring her back here, then she's going to hop onto the Elite ship and watch this place get blown to smithereens before going home."
"That ain't gonna help."
"Shut up."
"Really, it won't make any difference."
"I said shut up!" Gorman rested his forehead on one hand tiredly.
"Pressure of life getting to you, lieutenant?" Vasquez said, smirking.
"Pressure of life, no. Pressure of obnoxious roommate, yes!"
The smartgun operator shrugged. "You think you've got problems? I've had to deal with her for almost a week now."
Newt rolled her eyes and didn't bother answering.
"I was talking about you!" Gorman said sharply.
Vasquez' smirk widened. "I shouldn't worry, Gorman. I got word from a very reliable source that Hicks is here, on Gateway."
"What?" Gorman and Newt said simultaneously. Vasquez stretched out on the couch, now grinning.
"Oh yeah. Take a look at the classifieds. Seems Hicks can't wait to find us again."
"What?" The lieutenant scanned the paper rapidly, sorting through the pages until he came to the ad in question. He frowned. "That's not right."
"Fuck it isn't."
"Will you stop celebrating Newt's departure for just two minutes and think! Who the hell places ads like this?" The lieutenant scanned the page. "'Missing, one blond, blue-eyed six year old'? That's not a call for help; it's a goddamned commercial. I'd lay odds the Company planted it."
"For what?" Vasquez demanded. "They already know where the kid is."
Gorman shook his head dismissively. "They don't just want her, Vasquez. They want Hicks, and Hudson, and Apone and Dietrich and everyone else who came back from that hellworld. Nobody's going to listen to Newt; she's only a child."
"Am not!" Newt protested. Gorman continued, taking no notice.
"But if every surviving Marine claims the same thing, that's going to make things very awkward. They already got you and me, and Ripley. They want the rest of us so they can hush the whole thing up."
Vasquez looked at him oddly. "Why shouldn't they believe Newt? She's the only surviving colonist."
"She also happens to be six years old. Didn't you ever pretend or think that there were monsters or bad guys all around you when you were a kid?"
"Yeah," Vasquez retorted irritably. "That's because there usually were. Drink and drug abuse can do that to a person, lieutenant, or didn't they teach you that at your precious fucking academy?"
There was a short, embarrassed silence.
"We're getting off the subject," Gorman said diplomatically. "Bottom line, I heard some of the techs talking when I was in that cell. You, me and Ripley were brought in because we had the facehuggers. The others supposedly stayed just long enough to sort out settlements and pensions, then they scattered. One of those guys said how they'd taken Newt while Hicks was asleep, the day before they left Gateway. I thought I had to try and get to her, get her out before the Company managed to lock her in with a facehugger."
"How noble of you."
Gorman glanced over, saw the smartgun operator's curled lip and sighed. "Are you going to keep this up all the time we're here?"
"Probably. You're an easier target than the kid."
The lieutenant looked away again, scowling, and his gaze fell upon the paper again, on the half-page advertisement on the other side. He'd been wondering about this ever since he'd first come across it, and the more he thought about it, the better it seemed.
"You know this formal dinner the Company's giving?" he said suddenly.
"What about it?"
Gorman gulped down the rest of his coffee, wincing as it burned his throat. "I thought I might go. It could be interesting."
Vasquez' jaw dropped. "You what?"
"I said I thought I might go. At best, I'll find something out we can use, at worst, I'll probably get a decent meal."
"And what about me?"
Gorman glanced at her, startled. "Do you want to come?"
"I might," Vasquez said, more to judge the lieutenant's reaction than anything. Gorman shrugged.
"If you want to, you can, but you'll stick out like a sore thumb dressed like that."
The smartgun operator considered. "There's a load of clothes in the wardrobe. I can change, borrow some makeup from Charmaine."
There was a long, long silence.
"What?" Vasquez demanded at the end of it.
Gorman shook his head, as though trying to dislodge an image. "I'm trying to imagine you with eyeshadow and lipstick, that's all. It's almost as hard as trying to imagine you in something beside combats."
"Or not swearing so much," Newt added helpfully. The lieutenant glanced at her, then back at Vasquez.
"Yeah, and that's a good point as well. If you go around effing and blinding, people are gonna work out you're not what you seem. Anyway, who's going to look after Newt?"
"She can look after herself for a few hours." When Gorman remained unconvinced, Vasquez rolled her eyes. "Oh alright, fine, have it your way! Just try and bring back a doggy bag or something; I'm fucking sick of eating the same thing day in, day out."
"I'll go," Newt offered. "Do they have burgers at this place?"
"I highly doubt it," Gorman said heavily, "and no, you won't. You've probably been voted in as Company Enemy Number One; they'd grab you in less than a second."
Vasquez stretched up leisurely, then dropped her arms to her sides. "Alright, so you go on your own then. You've probably got more experience with oysters and champagne than either of us anyway."
"Oysters?" The lieutenant shuddered. "Thanks, but I'll pass. I had a couple at the passing-out parade and almost threw up over the commandant. It's like eating chilled phlegm."
Vasquez, who had celebrated her own passing-out with trash food and enough alcohol to put Menzies out of business and cause a little extra passing out that the NCOs hadn't banked on, snorted.
"Chilled phlegm or not, you're gonna have to eat some. As many as you can stomach."
Gorman paled. "Why?"
"Just do it, Gorman. And be sure to bring the shells back with you."
The lieutenant shook his head. "You want me to drop those vile things down my throat just to bring you a few shells, you're going to have to give me a damn good reason, Vasquez!"
"We need weapons. Not for the bugs so much as the assholes guarding us. I can fix that up, but I'm gonna need something to work with."
"So where do the oysters come in?"
Vasquez rolled her eyes. "When you burn oyster shells, you get something called quicklime." She spoke slowly and exaggeratedly, as though explaining to a mentally handicapped foreigner.
Newt sucked in her breath sharply, understanding. "That's really nasty."
"We ain't playing kid's games here," Vasquez informed her. "We want to get out. If we don't incapacitate or kill these people, then they will incapacitate or kill us. It's as simple as that."
Gorman cleared his throat. "Much as I hate giving you another reason to despise me, Vasquez-"
"Since when do I need a reason?"
"-I'm really not following you."
"You're gonna use that stuff, aren't you?" Newt said to Vasquez, ignoring the lieutenant.
"I sure as hell wouldn't ask Gormless for it otherwise."
"Can't you use your gun?"
Vasquez glanced at the pulse rifle.
"I could, but I want to keep it back for the bugs. I don't know if quicklime's likely to do them any damage. I do know that it's lethal to people, if you know how to use it. Pour it on their skin and they dissolve, shoot it into their eyes and they go blind."
"Yeah?" Gorman was staring at the woman as though he'd never seen her before, chalk white. "How do you know all this?"
"One of the guys in the slammer taught me. Taught everyone, actually; he liked to brag about it." Vasquez shook her head. "This ain't getting us anywhere. Fact remains, you're still gonna have to find a way to disguise yourself."
"I could grow a beard."
"I thought you already had."
The lieutenant glowered at her. The underarm razor Vasquez used was alright up to a point, but it was too blunt to be much use to him. It had taken almost two hours and a fair amount of skin before he'd managed to get his jawline back to anything remotely resembling smooth.
"He doesn't look like a soldier," Newt volunteered, holding both hands up to form a screen. "I don't think anyone'd suspect him of being a real soldier pretending to be a fake one."
"You see?" Gorman said to Vasquez. "Newt agrees with me...I think. And I can always dye my hair or something."
"I don't think you'll find any hairdressers or pharmacists around here," the smartgun operator said tartly.
"I can bleach it then."
"Doesn't that hurt?" Newt asked. Vasquez glanced at her.
"Yeah. Let's do it."
The lieutenant glared at her, but didn't answer. Vasquez eyed him critically. "Anyway, you're not far off that now. One other problem, though. What are you planning to wear?"
Gorman shrugged. "I thought I'd cross that bridge when I came to it."
"Yeah?" Vasquez snorted. "Well, you better fucking come to it before you go outside, because I don't think they'll let you in naked, unless you're gonna try convincing 'em you're going for the natural look. What if someone recognises you?"
Gorman shrugged again. "Unlikely. Anyone out there who wasn't trying to kill me was either you or thought I was a tech. And techs don't usually get invitations to these kind of things."
"Neither do Marines, Gorman, officers or otherwise!"
"I'm not going as a Marine. I'm going as a civilian dressed as a Marine."
"Right. Big difference there. You really think nobody will be able to tell the difference? As far as most people are concerned, if you dress like a fucking Marine, walk like a fucking Marine, talk like a fucking Marine and look like a fucking Marine, you are a fucking Marine! And I'm not sure the dressing part's compulsory anymore either!"
"Maybe not. But if I was such a shitty officer, nobody's going to suspect I'm the real thing. And I don't plan on convincing them I'm a bad officer either."
"You expect me to believe you can pass yourself off as a good one?" The smartgun operator snorted derisively. "Dream on."
"Well, he couldn't pass himself off as a worse one," Newt pointed out.
"Good point," Vasquez admitted.
"If you two have quite finished!" Gorman said heatedly, then took a couple of deep breaths in an effort to calm down. "Getting back to this dinner, I still think it could be interesting."
Vasquez shrugged. "So go then. Like I told the kid, this ain't a prison."
Gorman glanced down at the paper again. "Fine. What am I supposed to wear, though?"
"Why are you asking me?" Vasquez stretched out full length on the couch, linking her hands behind her head and closing her eyes. "In case it escaped your notice, I ain't been to many fancy dinners in my time, lieutenant."
"You probably have a better eye for these things than I do. What would look good on me?"
"A straitjacket?" Newt suggested, causing Vasquez to grin appreciatively.
"Don't you start," Gorman told the girl flatly. Newt rolled her eyes.
"Why don't you just get some uniforms from somewhere? You could always take a smartgun in as well."
"No I could not! I've never held one of those things in my life!"
Vasquez shifted her weight, settling herself more comfortably. "So? Nor have the others there, most likely. Maybe you should take a couple of grenade belts in, just to add authenticity."
Gorman glared at her, but the smartgun operator's eyes were still closed and she might have been thinking anything. "Alright. Before you both decide to send me in with a goddamn SADAR-"
Vasquez grinned broadly. "Oh man, how come I didn't think of that one?"
"Vasquez, I am going to try and infiltrate a dinner, not a damn war!"
"In my book, lieutenant, there ain't a whole lot of difference besides the fact that you don't have to pretend you like your enemies in a war."
Gorman sighed. "I also want to try and remain as inconspicuous as I can under the circumstances."
"Then you should probably do something about all those big words you like so much," Vasquez drawled, and dropped into an atrocious impersonation of Gorman's voice. "I want to remain as inconspicuous as I can under the circumstances. Man, who the fuck talks like that?" she added in her normal voice. "You wanna avoid being discovered, you should try talking like a grunt or something."
"A grunt. Alright." Gorman cleared his throat. "Hey dude, there's a fucking stranger looking at us funny! Let's fucking blow his fucking head off! Then let's go get fucking pissed and fucking smash up everything in the fucking bar before crawling back to the fucking barracks! Who the fuck gives a fuck about the fucking regs anyway, man?" He raised his eyebrows. "How was that?"
Vasquez snapped open dark eyes to regard him icily. "Very funny!"
"Yes, I thought so." Now it was Gorman who was smirking; it wasn't often he got to put one over on Vasquez.
Newt looked at Vasquez solemnly. "Still think I'm the worst roommate ever, Vaz?"
Vasquez snorted. "So far, kid, yeah. But I'm wavering. I'll admit that much."
Newt grinned, and for once the smartgun operator returned it.
"So what's in the ship?"
Tanner forced her eyes open and looked at Hicks. It had been a little over two and a half hours since she'd got up, and even that had exhausted her. Both Hudson and Dietrich had had to leave halfway through the session in order to get the bar open.
"What?"
"The ship, the goddamned ship!" Hicks slammed a hand down on the table so hard his palm stung and he heard the conversation in the bar falter. "Your Elite are going to a hell of a lot of trouble to get rid of anyone who might have seen it. According to Ripley's report, the ship's completely derelict—"
"Ripley never went inside, so Ripley wouldn't know, would she?" Tanner sipped at her drink again. Hicks was privately impressed; this was her fifth glass of firewater and she wasn't even slurring her speech. Tanner may not be an alcoholic, but it was clear she was one hell of an experienced drinker.
"So what happened?"
Tanner stared at what was left of her drink, then gulped it down and replaced the glass with a hand that shook ever so slightly.
"Our sun was dying," she said abruptly. "We had other worlds and colonies, but most of them were…well, a lot like Acheron, really; all rocks with no way of growing food. There was no way we could have survived without a mother world, and the few habitable worlds weren't enough to sustain all of us. Our scientists spent centuries trying to develop something that would allow us to colonise a new planet somewhere else." Tanner leaned back, wincing at the pain in her cracked ribs, and was silent for so long that Hicks started to think she'd fallen asleep. Eventually she spoke again.
"They developed something called the Flare Cannon, something that could turn a world into a new sun. I don't know any more about it than that. I do know that they installed the Flare Cannon in a ship called the Vidamer, tested it out on an asteroid and it worked just fine."
Hicks leaned forward slightly, staring at her intently. "So what went wrong?"
Tanner shrugged. "Word got out. The Flare Cannon was supposed to be used to transform uninhabited worlds, but it didn't take people long to realise that it would work just as well on populated ones as well. The Vidamer was boarded, the Flare Cannon was stolen and that was the last anyone heard of it."
Hicks shook his head, massaging his forehead as he leaned back again. "That doesn't make any sense. If you'd managed to get your hands on a weapon like that, wouldn't you want to make sure everyone knew about it?"
The woman gave him a slightly twisted smile. "Yeah, except something else went wrong. The Flare Cannon's command screen was accessible through a six-digit code, and if the wrong one was inputted, the entire system would freeze up. The code was supposedly recorded on a data disk known as the Gamma cartridge, but nobody ever found it. Including the raiders."
Hicks was silent now, trying to slot everything into place and failing.
"So…the ship on Acheron…"
"Yeah. There's no way of knowing exactly what happened, but from what I heard it's not hard to guess. Once they had the Flare Cannon, they made tracks as fast as they could before the authorities arrived. They must have been smuggling alien eggs as well, only they got careless." Tanner started to sip from her glass again, only to find that it was empty and Hicks had – either by accident or design – moved the bottle out of reach. "Their ship continued on until it passed close enough to a planet – in this case Acheron – to be pulled into its gravitational field and crash on the surface. The Flare Cannon's still there. Whether it's still intact, I've no idea – I doubt it – but the Elite could probably extrapolate the technology without too much difficulty."
"How long ago did all this happen?" The dates didn't add up as far as Hicks was concerned; according to Ripley's report, the pilot of the derelict ship had been fossilised. The corporal wasn't exactly an expert in scientific matters, but he was pretty certain that fossilisation took thousands of years.
Tanner tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling, lips moving soundlessly as she worked it out. Eventually she said, "I don't know exactly. I heard the raiders' ship was equipped with some kind of experimental technology to do with wormholes. Time gets pretty screwed up when you go through one of those; as far as the crew of that ship were concerned, it could have taken thousands of years instead of hundreds."
"Hundreds?" Hicks echoed.
"I was in stasis for the journey to Acheron, along with the rest of the crew. That journey took us some five hundred years."
"Five hundred?" The corporal stared at her, unable to come to terms with this. Five years he could have understood, sympathised with. But five hundred?
"So…there's probably nobody left alive back where you come from that even remembers this Flare Cannon thing."
"The fact that it was stolen?" Tanner shrugged. "Probably not. It was only six months ago as far as I'm concerned, but when you factor in time spent in hypersleep…" She let the sentence trail off, spread her hands in a shrug.
Hicks stared at her, for once speechless. Five hundred years? A thousand by the time they'd got back? Jesus Christ.
He rubbed the back of his neck, unaccountably dazed. How would that feel, to spend a thousand years away from a place, knowing when you got back home it would probably be changed beyond all recognition? Was anything worth that?
He was beginning to understand for the first time just what kind of people they were up against.
"For the last damn time—" Gorman folded his arms as best his ruined back would allow and glared at Vasquez— "the answer is no!"
The smartgun operator spun around so fast that the lieutenant took half a step back in spite of himself. "If you think I'm gonna let you waltz off to some fancy dinner and leave me alone in this hellhole—"
Gorman snorted. "Oh, you've changed your tune. From what I gathered before, I was the last person you wanted to share your little cell with!"
"And you still are!" Vasquez' voice rose slightly but she was past caring. "In case you've forgotten, Gorman, if it hadn't been for me agreeing to hide you in this little cell, you'd be writhing around with a bug chewing its way out of your body right about now!"
"Yes," Gorman shot back without missing a beat, "and if it hadn't been for me, then you'd have been bug food for that queen you were crazy enough to go up against, so I suggest we call it even, Vasquez!"
There was a long, deadly silence. The argument between them had been going on for some time and had been extremely vehement and occasionally hazardous to onlookers, Newt having narrowly missed being hit by a flying plate.
"Anyway, when I invited you before, you said you'd rather chew off your own arm than come along," Gorman added in a slightly calmer tone.
Vasquez looked away. This was quite true, although in her current mood she would have kissed a facehugger before admitting it. She wasn't a great one for pretty speech and politics – insincere sincerity, Drake had always called it – but ever since Gorman had mentioned the dinner she'd been thinking about it and found she was starting to like the idea. At least sneaking into the Company dinner to spy on the people who had locked her up would make her feel like she was doing something again.
"I don't care what I said, Gorman. If I spend one more day by myself in this place I'm going to go crazy!"
"You're hardly alone; you've got Newt here and Charmaine just down the corridor."
Vasquez snorted derisively. "Yeah. Like I'm gonna pay a social visit to that human chimney."
Gorman sat down at the table, massaging his forehead. After two and a half hours of going round in circles and arguing the same points over and over, he was more than a little tired and sorely tempted to forget the whole thing.
"Look. If I was going into a fight or something, believe me, you'd be the first person I chose. But I am going to be gatecrashing an exclusive dinner given by the same people who locked you up and tried to kill me, and you'd be no damn use there." When the smartgun operator opened her mouth to argue, Gorman cut across her testily. "Listen, I bow to your expertise when it comes to killing anything that moves, but you've never been to a fancy dinner party in your life."
Vasquez folded her arms. "And I suppose a bored rich kid like you went to one every fucking night of your life."
"I'm damn sure I've been to more than you!" Gorman conveniently forgot to mention the fact that he'd despised each and every one of them as a tedious waste of a good evening and had made a career out of avoiding as many as he could. "You'd stand out like a sore thumb and that would get us both arrested. And what would happen to Newt?"
Vasquez curled her lip. "You think I care?"
"You may not, but I do. I don't care how annoying you find her, Vasquez; she doesn't deserve to die for it and we both know you're the best bodyguard she could have. Even the kid could probably beat me in the shape I'm in now; I'm in no condition for a fight."
In fact, Gorman wasn't certain he was in any condition for sneaking into a fancy dinner either; the agony in his back was so intense it was making him light-headed, and lately it seemed that all he wanted to do was rest, but he kept that particular gem to himself.
"So what happens if they discover you?" Vasquez said.
"They won't." The lieutenant spoke dismissively, barely glancing up from his coffee. "They won't be looking for me there; they'll think I've left Gateway and that I'm well on my way back to my home world right about now. They'll send people to kill me there."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Common sense." The lieutenant took a large gulp of coffee as he spoke, wincing as it burned his mouth. "The first priority of the Company and by default the armed forces isn't reparation; it's containment."
Vasquez curled her lip. "Don't give me that shit. The Company wanted the bugs brought back so it could try and turn them to its own advantage. Even I know that."
Gorman looked at her and said very quietly, "Do you also know that my orders from the Company were to dispose of any surviving colonists on Acheron before obtaining specimens of the alien and then nuking the entire site from orbit to stop anyone else getting their hands on them?"
There was a long, long silence. Then Vasquez said, "What?"
The lieutenant shifted back in his chair. "When I was assigned to the Sulaco, I was told that there was a risk of xenomorph activity. Weyland-Yutani wanted specimens brought back, but they also wanted it hushed up completely. No survivors except us, and knowing what I know now I wouldn't have wagered much on that either."
"And you agreed?"
Gorman gave her a rather twisted smile. "Well, one doesn't say no to the Company. Besides, I was naïve enough to be flattered that they'd picked me to lead the mission when I'd only graduated a few months ago. And I didn't believe in the aliens any more than you did at first; I thought it was a downed transmitter, that there wouldn't be anything to hush up."
"So what happened? You have second thoughts?" Vasquez' voice was heavy with sarcasm.
"When I saw the state of the place, I thought that there weren't any survivors and all we'd have to do would be secure a specimen or two – and the colonists had already done that with those facehuggers – and get the hell out. That was before we found Newt. I'd already made up my mind that I wasn't going to follow the Company orders and that I would order any surviving colonists to be dropped off on another world somewhere, but even if I hadn't..." Gorman let the sentence trail off and then, when Vasquez didn't say anything, added, "Well, I could hardly order the execution of a six year old child, could I?" He frowned suddenly. "Maybe that's why they locked me in that cell instead of you, because they knew I wasn't going to play along with them."
Some of Vasquez' feelings re the likelihood of her own cooperation with the Company must have been obvious on her face, because Gorman nodded.
"Yes, I know. But technically speaking, you hadn't done anything wrong. I'd disobeyed a direct order from Weyland-Yutani and that gave them all the reason they needed to lock me up." He considered this for a few minutes, then added, "Not that they actually needed a valid reason, I suppose; it just cut down on the paperwork." Gorman tested his coffee again, found it had cooled enough to drink and drained the mug in a few swallows.
"You never mentioned this on the Sulaco."
The lieutenant spared her an irritable glance. "Oh come on, Vasquez, give me some credit! Since when do officers share every little detail of their orders with grunts? If I'd said we might have to gun down innocent people, I'd have had a damn mutiny on my hands before we even left the ship! The Company wants us all dead, and if we can find out what they're planning—"
"Right, because I'm sure they're going to give away their most secret plans in the after dinner speeches."
"Well, if you have any other ideas, now's the time!"
Vasquez snorted as she looked at him. "You don't even have anything to wear. That outfit's two sizes too big."
"Yes, I had noticed that," Gorman answered rather tersely. "And for your information, Vasquez, I do have something besides this to wear."
"Then why don't you?" Vasquez shot back in a tone which said she didn't believe a word of it. "Where'd you get this new wardrobe, anyway?"
"You remember when we had that…discussion about Drake?"
Discussion. Well, that was certainly one word for it, Vasquez thought sourly. Aloud she said, "Yeah. You went to hide at Charmaine's."
"Eventually, yes. I went through the airducts and took a little trip outside to the barracks. It was a hell of a long shot, but I thought there might be a record of some of the others."
"And was there?" Vasquez said sarcastically.
"No." Gorman's mind strayed back to the young man he'd seen. Could it have been—no. No, that would just be too much of a coincidence. "But I did manage to get a set of fatigues. I thought it'd be better than this." He fingered one sleeve of the oversized shirt he was wearing with an expression of disdain.
"And what about this?" Vasquez tapped a fingernail on the part of the dinner notice that said Invitation Only.
Gorman shrugged. "I'll find an invitation from somewhere."
In spite of his words, the lieutenant doubted it was going to be as simple as that. Maybe if he'd still been a registered officer...
"So what are you going to do?" Vasquez sneered. "Tell them the invite got lost in the mail and ask them to pretty please let you in regardless?"
Gorman set his coffee mug down on the table with a little more force than was strictly necessary.
"If I have to!"
"Right." The smartgun operator tilted her head slightly to one side. "You're fucking crazy, you know that?"
Gorman surged upright, then regretted it as dizziness assailed him and he had to grab the table for support.
"At least I'm trying to do something about our current situation! What the hell have you been doing except whining?"
Vasquez leapt to her feet, eyes blazing. "Say that again!"
"Sorry, Vasquez. I forgot you have trouble with words of more than one syllable."
The smartgun operator started towards him with open murder in her eyes, but at that moment the door to Newt's room opened and the girl wandered out.
"Vaz, I can't find my yellow crayon. Have you…" Her voice tailed off as she picked up on the charged atmosphere and saw Vasquez and Gorman apparently about to have a free fight. "Uh. Never mind."
Gorman narrowed his eyes as he stared at Vasquez, but Newt's appearance had put a stop to any thoughts of physical combat…which was just as well, really. Like he'd said to Vasquez, he wasn't in any shape for a fight.
"You know what?" he said suddenly. "The hell with you. You want to sit and do nothing but gripe, you can damn well do it on your own."
Pausing in the door, he turned just long enough to deliver a parting shot.
"It's a damn good thing Drake died when he did, Vasquez, because if the acid hadn't killed him, seeing you reduced to some stay-at-home whiner would have."
Vasquez stared at him for a long time but couldn't seem to find any words to answer. Judging from her expression, it was clear she felt Gorman's remark was well below the belt.
Already feeling a little ashamed of his words, the lieutenant spun on his heel and strode out, taking care to slam the door hard behind him.
"So who the hell are you, and where's Hicks?"
Ruin's mind worked frantically. Apone was still standing in her doorway and they were beginning to attract attention.
"If you'd just come inside—"
"Not a chance."
The instinct to get away from the man really was getting quite strong now. Ruin forced a smile onto her lips and said the first thing that came into her head.
"Now's not a good time for me. I'm on my way to meet someone, and it really can't wait."
Without waiting to see Apone's reaction, she slid past him. It was the beginning of commuter time on Gateway and within seconds she'd been swallowed up in the crowd.
Left alone, Apone glanced at Spunkmeyer's still pallid complexion. "You look like you just saw a ghost."
Collapsing onto a chair, Spunkmeyer ran shaking hands over his face. "Yeah? Well, that could be because I think I did. I swung by the barracks to pick up some clothes – oh, don't ask," he added bitterly as Apone opened his mouth. "Turns out I wasn't the only one with that idea. There was this guy there who seemed to have had the same idea."
"Someone you knew?"
Spunkmeyer gave a short laugh. "You could say that. It was lieutenant Gorman, sarge. I'd swear it on my deathbed."
Apone hesitated. He wasn't a superstitious man, but something about the dropship crew chief's expression was unnerving him.
"What're you saying, this guy looked like Gorman?"
"It was Gorman. He wasn't in uniform, but...hell, if it wasn't him, it was his twin. He looked at me and said my name, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and when I opened them he was gone." Spunkmeyer shook his head. "Fuck, he even had the head wound."
The look on Apone's face said quite clearly that he thought Spunkmeyer had suffered the same thing, and the dropship crew chief added, "From when he got knocked out in the APC. It had healed some but it was still there."
Apone didn't answer, mind busy turning this new development over.
Was it possible that the Company had lied? Or to put it more accurately, was it probable? Had the others somehow survived?
"The lieutenant's dead. You know that."
Spunkmeyer shook his head. "No, I don't. He, Ripley and Vasquez got hit with facehuggers. We never saw those...those things come out; when we came out of hypersleep, the three of them were gone. How do we know the Company didn't take out the aliens and leave the hosts alive?"
The sergeant held this idea up briefly, then tossed it on the scrapheap. Even if the Company had managed to take the chestbursters out of Gorman and the other two, as soon as it was done they would have simply shot them without any preamble. Hell, why waste the ammo; Apone was pretty sure that the Company would have just locked them up and left them to die when the alien embryo chewed its way out.
"You're seeing things."
"Maybe." Spunkmeyer didn't look convinced. "But that doesn't explain how this guy knew my name. I've kept a very low profile since getting out of the Corps."
"Have you heard from any of the others?"
The young man shrugged. "No, not really. I get the odd invitation from Hudson to go visit his bar, but I've never taken him up on it. And Hicks, but I haven't heard from him for some time, not since he kept calling me every half hour to solve this problem or that one with his goddamn ship."
"What about your friend?"
"Ruin?" Spunkmeyer glanced around. "Don't ask me, sarge; I'm just the fucking pilot. Out somewhere, I guess. Maybe to sort out an invitation to that dinner the Company's giving; she was talking about that before I left. Why?"
"Good." Apone caught hold of Spunkmeyer's elbow and hauled him to his feet. "Then we should get the hell out before she comes back."
The young man blinked, puzzled. "Sarge?"
"You heard me. That girl's trouble. She works for the goddamn Company."
Spunkmeyer stared at him. "How do you know that?"
"She called me Apone. I changed my name when I moved here and I never saw her before in my life, so just how the hell did she know who I was?"
The dropship crew chief shrugged. "She knows a lot of things, sarge." Damn, he'd have to get out that habit; they weren't in the Marines now. "She knows about the bugs as well."
"She's gonna get you killed."
It wasn't an exaggeration. Apone wasn't given to melodrama; usually he meant things pretty much as he said them.
Spunkmeyer shrugged, pretending a bravado he didn't quite feel. There was no way he was going to risk losing what Ruin had promised him, not now.
"I'll just have to take that chance."
The older man scrutinised him through narrow eyes. He knew Spunkmeyer – they'd flown together on several missions – and he also knew that his calm, level front was just that; a front. There was a lot of anger in that young man; Spunkmeyer was the only Marine from their platoon bar Hicks and Apone himself that Drake and Vasquez had never picked a fight with.
"Follow me. Now."
Something in that tone had to be obeyed, and the dropship crew chief only hesitated the briefest instant before following Apone outside.
The sergeant led him to a small cafe that specialized in old-style Earth foods and ordered them both a cheeseburger, ignoring Spunkmeyer's protests.
"How much is she paying you?" he demanded.
Spunkmeyer's knuckles whitened on his glass, but his voice was perfectly even as he answered, "You're the second person to ask me that."
"Who was the first?"
"A couple of thugs who tried to beat her offer. Then they tried to beat me." The young man drained his Coke and slammed the glass down on the table. "Look, sarge, it's not that I don't appreciate the free meal," he began, in a tone which slandered his every word.
"Then shut up and eat it." Apone took a large bite out of his own burger as he spoke. "What did she offer you?"
Spunkmeyer looked away, eyes suddenly dark. "That's personal. It's nothing illegal, but there's nothing anyone could offer me to make me double-cross her."
"Spunkmeyer—"
"No." The dropship crew chief pushed his plate away and rose to his feet. "I can't go against her. Not now. Not until I've got what she promised me."
He spun on his heel and stalked out, leaving his food untouched on the table.
"What d'you think she said to him?" Hudson asked idly.
Dietrich shrugged. "Who cares? She's on our side."
"That's what I said about Ruin," the comtech couldn't resist pointing out, a little more sharply than usual. He'd spent the past few hours replaying every conversation he and Ruin had ever had in his mind, trying to see if there had been anything there that could have given a hint of her intentions. Had she been ordered to wait for Hicks to turn up, no matter how long it took? Or had she simply been told to keep an eye on Hudson and Dietrich, making Hicks' arrival nothing more than a happy coincidence?
The medtech snorted. "Yeah, but unlike that scheming little bitch, I hardly think Tanner's in a position to change anything around here."
Right on cue, Hicks' battered holdall came bouncing down the stairs, closely followed by Hicks himself.
Startled, Hudson fumbled his drink and barely managed to catch it in time. Emerging from under the bar, he caught hold of Hicks' arm.
"Hey man, what the fuck's going on?"
"I'm leaving."
"Well, yeah, I gathered that, but why? Where're you going?"
"I'm going back to Acheron." Hicks spoke rapidly, as though he wanted to get the words out quickly before he changed his mind.
There was a long pause before Hudson said, "Y'know, Cyn, I think I just slipped sideways into a parallel universe where Dwayne told me he was going back to Acheron."
"I am going back."
Dietrich barely looked up from the table she was clearing as she said, "Tell me, Dwayne; you ever heard the saying you can't go home again?"
The sudden drop in temperature informed the medtech that this wasn't the best thing she could have said and she glanced up to meet Hicks' killing stare.
"Over the line?" Dietrich asked.
"Yeah. Way over it. I'm going back and home—" Hicks all but snarled the word at Dietrich— "has nothing to do with it! They want the Flare Cannon, then we'll bring it back here and negotiate. They're not going to blow up something they came all this way to get."
Hudson, who had stopped Hicks' almost manic pacing by the simple method of tripping the older man up when he got close enough, caught hold of his shoulders and physically sat him down at one of the tables.
"Okay. Real slow now. What. The. Hell?"
Too late, Hicks remembered that Hudson hadn't been present for Tanner's explanation.
"It doesn't matter, okay? What matters is that I have to get back to Acheron and that goddamned ship before they do!"
"It wouldn't make any difference." Tanner's voice came tiredly from the stairs and all three turned to see her leaning against the wall. "The Elite know where that ship is. You don't seriously believe they'll have left it unprotected, do you? And even if they had, the Flare Cannon is the size of a small house; you'd never get it on your ship."
There was a long, long silence.
"Even if that's true," Hicks said at the end of it, "there has to be something there they might trade. At the very least, I'll find out what kind of people we're dealing with."
"Dwayne, you can't—" Hudson began.
"Don't." For a minute, Hicks was in command again, an NCO reprimanding a private soldier. "If I have to sit on my hands for one more minute, I'm gonna go out of my mind, especially since I now know that the one person you thought would be able to help me has orders to blow us all sky-high!"
Turning, he strode across the floor towards the exit, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. "And do me a favour, Will; get out of this bar already! If they are planning to kill us by bombing this place, what do you say we don't make it easy for them?"
The door banged behind him and he was gone.
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