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Two days out of Basic and they were already calling her up, ring ring on the vidcom: Lieutenant Flyn's ugly face like the world's most awful fucking alarm clock, waking her up in that evil early-morning darkness before reveille. Woke up everyone else too, the whole barrack grumbling and bitching and groaning. Somebody, she was pretty sure it was Munro, threw a goddamn pillow at her. Like it was her fault Lieutenant Flyn was was such a hardass.
"Report to the briefing room at oh six hundred," Lieutenant Flyn said.
"All of us?" somebody shouted in the dark.
"No. Just Vasquez."
More moaning. Vasquez saluted and gave a "Sir, yes, sir," and wondered if this meant Lieutenant Flyn's hardass-ness actually was her fault this time. Not that she cared. The screen switched off, plunging the room back into shadows, and Vasquez had already rolled out of bed. The meeting wasn't for another hour and a half but it would cut into the time she spent working out before breakfast, and she couldn't have that.
The rest of the barracks was already falling back asleep, snoring and settling down into their blankets. Vasquez jogged out into the dewy early morning air. The sky was still full of stars and satellites and ships waiting in orbit to descend to Earth. She picked up speed and the exercise warmed her muscles and her thoughts both. She wondered what they wanted with her -- with just her.
The stars lit up her usual running trail, silvery light falling everywhere. She hoped this early-morning call meant she'd be going up there, settling back into a cryochamber for a long nap to Someplace Else. Someplace she could use her smartgun.
It was too damn early to get excited, too damn early to get scared, but maybe she was anyway, a little of both.
The briefing room was already full by the time Vasquez got there, five or six guys standing around like they didn't know what to expect. She'd seen most of the guys around, even gone through Basic with a couple. One of them was Bill Hudson. Figures she'd get called out for some special just-her mission and his stupid ass would be here.
Vasquez sat down, hooked her foot around the leg of a nearby chair, and dragged it over beside her so she could prop up her feet. She positioned herself so that she had a view not just of the front of the room but of the rest of the men as well. Sizing them up. Hudson, of course, the inescapable fucking Hudson. Drake was here, fellow gunner, and another one she'd gone through Basic with. Crow and Frost: knew of them, didn't know them. Corporal Hicks was lounging in the corner, looking either bored or sleepy.
The door slammed open.
"Attention!" Sergeant Apone shouted, and that got them to their feet fast enough, everybody springing into motion. He marched into the room, followed by the always-scowling Lieutenant Flyn, followed by some skinny guy she'd never seen before. Didn't look like a soldier.
"At ease."
The room seemed to let out a sigh. Everyone sat back down. No one said anything now that Lieutenant Flyn was here but the air had a charge to it, like power coursing through a pulse rife, and Vasquez leaned forward, fingers tapping against her thigh, her blood sparking in anticipation.
"You're probably all wondering why we called you here," Lieutenant Flyn said.
"No, not at all," Hudson said. Lieutenant Flyn ignored him. So did everyone else.
"Weyland-Yutani asked us to put together a squad for a special mission. Off-world."
The skinny guy activated a holoscreen and a transparent planet showed up in midair, clouds swirling across its surface.
"This is LV-289," Lieutenant Flyn went on. "It's next in line for terraforming. But they've got a problem with some of the fauna. Can't install a colony until that's taken care of."
The planet kept spinning in the front of the room and all the Marines stared up at Lieutenant Flyn in dumbfounded silence.
"A fucking extermination trip?" Frost said.
"Yeah, a fucking extermination trip," Sergeant Apone snapped. "Shut up and be grateful it's not shooting asteroids out at LV-839."
"Weyland-Yutani asked us not to divulge the details until we were in orbit, but I can assure you all this is decidedly not a job for the terraforming extermination crews. And keep in mind, boys and girls, that the planet is in line for terraforming. It hasn't been terraformed yet. You'll be wearing bio suits or you'll be sucking down toxic air. Your choice."
Groans filled the room, grumbles of protest. Vasquez was chief among them. She remembered the drills from Basic, scrambling around in the bulky suits, the recycled air making her head hurt. Jesus.
Lieutenant Flyn gave them all a shut-the-fuck-up look, which did, surprisingly, get them to shut the fuck up. "Weyland-Yutani has also agreed to furnish a warship for the mission. State of the art."
"Too good for the likes of all you," Sergeant Apone added, and the room erupted into jeers. Sergeant Apone just laughed.
Another shut-the-fuck-up face.
"It's standard for all Weyland-Yutani ships to stock a synthetic on board," Lieutenant Flyn said. "This one's no exception. You get Bishop."
The skinny guy lifted his head a little and smiled, and for the first time Vasquez looked at him, really looked, and yeah, he was a robot.
"Huh," Drake said beside her.
"He'll be serving as executive officer aboard the Sulaco. Unlike you assholes, he doesn't have to worry about LV-289's atmosphere, so we'll be looking to him for medical support in the field. Any questions?"
For a moment there was just silence, as everyone took this all in, the stupid extermination mission, and the synthetic, and Weyland-Yutani's involvement. Corporal Hicks was the one who finally broke the silence, speaking from the back of the room.
"When do we ship out?"
Sergeant Apone grinned. "Glad you asked."
A pause.
"Twelve hundred," Lieutenant Flyn said. "High noon. Today. Best get packing, boys and girls. We've got a long trip ahead of us."
Waking up in the cryochamber was a sucker punch. Vasquez didn't even remember what she'd been dreaming about -- some vague sense memories lingered, warm summer heat and the brightness of hibiscus flowers, the acrid scent of gasoline-burning car exhaust. But then it was gone, and there was just the halogen lights of the ship bearing down on her. The rest of the squad was crawling out of their cryochambers, shambling and squinting into the lights and muttering a few fucks and shits because God knew it was too soon for them to think of anything better to say.
She'd heard waking up from hypersleep was like waking up into the world's worst hangover, but it wasn't so bad. She was hungry and she felt weak, but that was it. The cryochamber was supposed to massage her muscles as she slept, and she supposed it had, given that she was able to scramble out of the chamber without much trouble. But her body didn't feel it belonged to her. It was kind of like wearing a bio-suit, actually, her movements weird and cumbersome and detached. She didn't like it.
"Time for breakfast, Vasquez," Drake said, slapping her on the shoulder.
Breakfast. Yeah. She never went straight to breakfast.
"Not yet," she said, and she dropped down into her daily push-ups, her body shuddering at the sudden exertion. She ignored it.
"Fucking show-off," Drake said, laughing. She ignored that too.
She didn't bother doing a full workout, just some push-ups and sit-ups, enough to make her body feel closer to normal. She was shaking by the time she made it down to the mess hall, skin coated in a thin layer of sweat. Too much too soon, probably, but she didn't give a damn.
The squad were all crammed into the table by the time she got there, everybody but Lieutenant Flyn. Food was laid out in a neat arrangement like at a restaurant. Good stuff, too, bacon and scrambled eggs, flash-frozen fruit thawing out in bowls, stacks of pancakes. Fucking pancakes! Maybe shipping out for Weyland-Yutani wasn't so bad after all.
"Would you like some orange juice, Private Vasquez?" Bishop appeared at her side with a pitcher and an empty glass.
"Uh, sure, man, I'll take some."
He poured the orange juice for her and she wondered if she was supposed to thank him or not, but he slipped away before she had the chance to say anything. Then Hudson was shouting at her to come sit in his lap, and she took a long drink of orange juice and her thoughts turned away from the protocols of dealing with synthetics.
"Your lap?" she said. "What, your hand not getting the job done anymore?" Laughter filled up the mess hall, and she squeezed in between Hudson and Crow and started filling up her plate.
"So does anybody know why the fuck they asked us to do this?" Hudson said.
"I don't know why the fuck they asked you," Vasquez said, sliding a couple more slices of bacon onto her plate.
"I'm being serious," Hudson said. "Don't they got guys for this kind of thing? I mean, don't you think our services would be better served, I don't know, out on New Mercury or something? Not chasing down -- whatever." He shrugged. "I'm just saying."
"Nah, I hear you." Crowe leaned back in his chair. "Seems pretty stupid to me, honestly, sending us out on a damn hypership, stocking up our armory, making us this fucking -- breakfast." He gestured at the strewn-out remains of their meal. "A lot of effort for just some bugs, you know?"
A murmur of agreement. Vasquez gulped down her orange juice. Part of her agreed too but part of her was happy to have something to do other than hanging around the barracks, cleaning her gun over and over.
"The worst part'll be the bio suits," she said, dropping her fork on her empty plate. "You remember the drills, Drake?"
"Yeah," he said, and Hudson said, "Worst two days of my life."
"Really," said Vasquez. "I'd have thought the worst two days of your life would have been the weekend you spent on Shirkai." She grinned. "You ever get those sores checked out?"
Hudson glowered at her and the rest of the crew howled with laughter. She and Drake bumped fists under the table.
"Well," Hudson said, drawing himself up, "At least I don't --"
"Attention!"
The clatter of silverware against porcelain, the scrape of chairs against tile. Everyone scrambled to their feet and straightened their spines and Lieutenant Flyn walked in, looked them over once, and said, "Briefing room. We're about to send you out."
And then he left the mess hall.
For a moment no one moved. Sergeant Apone was the first, pushing himself away from the table. "You heard the man," he said. "We've been asleep four months, least we can do is get some work done."
Bishop detached from his place along the wall and began cleaning the table.
The rest of them took that as a sign to clear out.
"Listen close," Lieutenant Flyn said. "I'm not repeating this twice."
The briefing room onboard the Sulaco was half the size of the one down on the Earth base. They were crammed in close, everybody itching with questions. There was no holoscreen here, just Lieutenant Flyn pacing back and forth across the room's narrow width, his forehead gleaming with sweat.
"We don't want to take too long out here," he went on. "We've got a large area to cover and we don't know exactly what we're dealing with, just that's it's dangerous. Watch yourselves."
Grumbles of irritation that he should even have to tell them.
"We'll be splitting off into pairs. You see anything that's not human, you shoot it. Bring the corpse back with you. Don't do anything stupid. This isn't a goddamn battle for glory and honor. Just shoot the things and bring one back."
Vasquez had grown up in a world where questioning the order of things only made shit worse, but she'd never been one to learn a lesson easily. And these instructions, to bring a corpse back -- something about it pinged her as off. Maybe not the instructions in and of themselves, but the way Lieutenant Flyn kept pacing across the room, sweating so much he looked like he was melting.
"Why?" she said.
The room was quiet. Lieutenant Flyn stopped and turned and looked at her. She jutted her chin out. Didn't look away.
"Why?" he said. "Because I fucking told you to, that's why."
The rest of the squad tittered, but his answer only set a hard knot of anger burning in her chest.
"All right, team assignments." Lieutenant Flyn pointed off as she spoke. "Frost and Crowe, you're together. Drake and Hicks. Hudson and Vasquez."
"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ," Vasquez said.
Hudson laughed. "Looks like it's just gonna be me and you out there today. Maybe you can check those sores out for me yourself."
"Shut up." She didn't feel like dealing with Hudson right now. She was still burning at the way Lieutenant Flyn refused to answer her question. Yeah, yeah, she was a Marine and she was supposed to take orders and like it. But why the hell was he so nervous?
She didn't like this. She didn't like any of it.
Hudson slapped her on the back. "C'mon Vasquez, let's get going. It's gonna take like an hour to get suited up."
"Yeah, yeah." She scowled. Everybody was filing out of the room, bitching about the bio suits. Vasquez went along with them, doing her best to ignore Hudson's bluster. She was still thinking about Lieutenant Flyn. God. It didn't matter that much, she knew that. She was here to do one stupid job, and she'd do it (with Hudson, fuck) and then they'd be done and back to Earth and Weyland-Yutani would have whatever it wanted out of this expensive-as-hell operation and go about its merry corporate way.
Just the way things worked.
The bio suits were waiting for them in the equipment room, lined up in rows, as big and cumbersome as she remembered. Hudson pulled his off the rack and almost fell trying to pull it on.
"You're an idiot," Vasquez told him. Drake heard her and laughed.
"Like you'll do so much better." He had a point. Everyone was struggling with the bio suits, the way you always did. The things were practically space suits; they sealed off the outside air and fed you their own stale recycled oxygen. And they were a massive pain in the ass to put on.
"Of course I can," Vasquez said, and she snatched her own suit off the rack and thought for a minute. She remembered feeling like a moron when she pulled this thing on during Basic, and she remembered she'd tried pulling it on standing up, which is what they were all doing now. Solution, she thought: pull it on sitting down.
She plopped down on the bench, kicked off her boots, pulled on the suit legs. Then she jumped up, one quick movement, and zipped the thing up to her neck.
"Done," she said.
"You're never gonna hear the end of that, Hudson," Sergeant Apone said, and Vasquez grinned, grabbed her helmet. She was starting to feel a little better, starting to feel that crackle you get before a firefight, like all the cells in your body are charging up.
She and the rest of the Marines made their way down to the armory. She didn't need to spend a lot of time in here; she knew her weapon of choice, knew it well. She selected her usual smartgun and grabbed a pistol for Hudson.
"Come on, man," Hudson said. "You can get me something better than that."
"For the guy who can't even put on his damn bio suit? I don't think so." She shoved the pistol at him. He glared at her, but he took it.
"All right, boys and girls, gather round." Lieutenant Flyn again, and Vasquez felt another knot of anger. No, not anger exactly -- mistrust maybe. And she didn't need that right now.
"Your quadrants are programmed into your suits," Lieutenant Flyn said.
"Fancy," Crowe called out.
"You can thank Weyland-Yutani. This should go without saying, but keep to your quadrant. We've got about twelve hours till dark, and I expect each of you to be back by then. This place drops thirty below come nightfall, so don't try any fucking heroics. Bishop'll be monitoring the weather from the ship, and we'll send word if anything dangerous comes up. You get word from us, you come back. Understand?"
Everyone did.
They marched down to the holding bay, two by two like ants. Hudson kept bumping into Vasquez like some five year old with a crush.
"Knock it off," she said.
"Just can't wait to get started."
"Started with what? Playing king of the hill?"
He grinned at her. "You know what I'm playing at."
Vasquez didn't, but she also knew better than to ask Hudson to explain one of his jokes. They were at the holding bay anyway, everybody standing around the airlock.
"Put on your helmets!" Lieutenant Flyn's voice came in over the loudspeaker, louder than if he'd been in the room with them. Vasquez slid her helmet on, locked it into the place. There was a moment of disorientation as the air shifted, but then she was breathing, a bit of a fog clouding up her faceplate.
The warning bells clanged.
The airlock screeched open.
"Fucking shit." Hudson's voice filtered through her bio suit's earpiece. Vasquez didn't say anything, because she didn't have to. Hudson had said it all.
The planet's surface was thick with vegetation, all of it a sallow yellow-grey. Trees soared up to the yellow sky, vines connecting them like tendons. Heavy ivory fog hung close to the ground. Vasquez' suit hissed, reflecting her breathing back to her. She was breathing fast.
"Where are we going?" Her voice rattled around inside her helmet. Felt like talking to herself.
"North," Hudson said. "That way." He pointed into the fog. "You can pull up your own map, you know."
Vasquez sighed, shifted her gun out of her shooting hand, activated the map. It appeared in the bottom of her face plate, an unfamiliar pattern of red light, two green dots blinking in the lefthand corner.
"Ready?" Hudson asked.
"Ready."
They moved out. The other Marines were creeping their way through the fog, guns hoisted, but Vasquez focused her attention on the map, on the blinking green dot that represented her.
Off they went, into the woods.
The vegetation on the ground was spongy. Unnatural. Alien. Her feet sank into like it was snow or sand or rot. She focused on her hissing breath, on the fog parting around her. It wasn't Earth fog. It wasn't even fucking Martian fog, that trailing mist left over from the terraforming process. There was nothing human about it.
"Having fun yet?" Hudson's voice startled her.
"Have we started shooting anything?"
"No."
"Then no."
They were almost to the treeline. The trunks twisted in on themselves, and the vines twisted around the trunks as if to choke them. Every now and then a yellow leaf flashed through the fog.
"So what are we looking for again?" Vasquez darted her gaze around.
"You heard Flyn. A critter."
"Yeah, but we don't know what it looks like."
"Don't need to. Just shoot anything that's not human."
The trees blocked out the thin sunlight and the fog seemed even thicker, like it was coating itself to their bio suits. Hard to tell a human from a critter out here.
"You might want to stay out of my line of sight then," Vasquez said, "if we're shooting things that aren't human."
Hudson laughed, although over the speaker it sounded like static. That was the most unnerving thing about the bio suits, Vasquez thought, the way you couldn't hear anything but your own breath and other people's voices.
They edged forward, further into the forest. Everything looked the same. Shadows moved through the fog and set Vasquez' nerves on edge, but they always turned out to be just shadows. She jerked her gun around, vaguely aware of Hudson moving along beside her.
"So who you think's gonna bag one first?"
Hudson's voice startled her. "Who do you think?"
"Only the most badass Marine in the squad."
Vasquez grinned even though she knew he couldn't see. "Always knew you appreciated me."
"I said badass, not dumbass."
"Exactly."
They moved forward. The fog had taken on a yellow tinge, like smog hanging over a freeway, but at least it was thinning out some. The trees looked like hunching giants.
"You want make a bet?" Hudson asked.
"What, you mean me and you?"
"Sure. Whoever shoots one first win."
"I'm the one with the smartgun."
"I'm the one with the reflexes."
"You can't fucking fool me, Hudson. I went through Basic with you."
He cackled. "All right, here are the terms: Loser makes the winner's bed for a month."
"Fine. Hope you've been practicing your hospital corners."
"Excellent." He darted forward, moving ahead of her into the fog. The prospect of beating Hudson at something, even something as stupid as shooting an alien first, actually calmed her nerves. More leaves were falling through the fog, flashes of yellow like winking eyes.
"What do you think they want with these things anyway?" Hudson asked. According to her map, he was about thirty paces ahead of her. Through her faceplate she could just see the outline of his bio suit.
"Hell if I know."
"Weird that they have a synthetic on board, don't you think?"
"Not really. It's standard these days."
"We never had them in Basic."
"That's 'cause it was fucking Basic. What do you want? He's part of the company's equipment anyway."
"I dunno, I just think its weird."
Vasquez didn't say anything. She thought it was weird that Lieutenant Flyn wouldn't tell them why they were on an extermination trip, or why Weyland-Yutani wanted them to bring back a corpse. Or hell, why Weyland-Yutani was sending them out in fucking pairs to get rid of the things. Why not just carpet-bomb the planet? It wasn't even inhabitable yet.
Hudson started yammering again, his voice a whine in her ear piece. He was still hung up on the damn synthetic. She tuned him out, swept her gaze across the forest. The leaves were falling thicker and thicker. Almost as thick as the fog.
"The fucking leaves," she muttered, feeling like she was missing a piece of something.
"What?" Hudson said.
Vasquez ignored him, pushed forward.
"Vasquez? What'd you say?"
"Nothing! It's just the leaves -- why're there so many of them?"
"Nothing from the ship about the weather."
Vasquez frowned, then stopped next to a thick, arching tree root. A couple of leaves stuck to her faceplate and she swiped them away. They stuck to her glove.
A burst of static in her speaker.
"Hudson!" she said. "Report."
Another burst of static.
The pop of gunfire.
"Fuck! Hudson!" His dot on the map was still blinking. Twenty paces to the west. She whirled in place and raced toward him, stumbling over the thick ground.
"Vasquez!" Hudson shouted. "I hear you!"
"What the hell happened!"
"This fucking thing jumped out -- fuck!"
Another burst of gunfire. The map told her she was almost to him, but she couldn't see him through the cloak of leaves and fog. He was going to fucking shoot her if she wasn't careful.
Something burst out of the leaves.
"Shit!" Vasquez fired her gun on instinct. The thing jerked backwards and slammed into the ground. It was big and pale, the same color as the fog. It kind of looked like an octopus.
"Vasquez!" Hudson's voice burst in her ear, strained and screaming. "It ripped my fucking suit!"
"Jesus Christ!" Vasquez jerked her gaze away from the alien bleeding out on the forest floor. "Where the hell are you! Close the tear!"
"I'm trying." A pause, crackling with static. "I can see you! Turn around!"
Vasquez whirled in place, her breath coming hard and fast. The fog was creeping low to the ground, curling over the lumps of tree roots. "Where!" she shouted.
"Right here! You're almost stepping on me!"
She looked down, and then she saw him. He was coated in the yellow leaves, and in the bio suit he didn't look like a person, but part of the trees. She slid her gun aside and knelt down, wiping the leaves off his faceplate. He was pale behind the glass, beads of sweat trickling down his forehead.
"Don't fucking breathe!" she said. "Where's the rip?"
"In my left leg. Thigh. The air hasn't gotten contaminated yet."
Well, yeah. He was still alive, still talking to her. She ran her hand down his leg. The rip was small, only a couple of centimeters across. It had also only gone through the first layer of material, thank Christ.
"We're going back," she said. "Before one of those things attacks again and tears your suit all the way through."
Hudson closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell beneath his suit. "Right." He opened his eyes, grinned a little. "I still shot one first, though."
"Whatever, pendejo. I shot one without ripping my goddamn suit."
Hudson laughed. He pushed himself up to sitting, shedding leaves into the fog. Vasquez took a step back and scanned the area, although there was nothing to see but fog. Hudson struggled to his feet, breath clouding up his faceplate.
And then he collapsed. His knees sank into the leaves and his mouth opened up in a cry of pain. She heard it in her earpiece.
"Hudson!" She slid forward, dropping her gun, catching him under the arms. "Jesus, what's the matter with you!"
"Couldn't put pressure on my leg." His hand groped along his left thigh, covering up the tear. "That thing, when it slammed into me -- I must've sprained something."
Vasquez looped his arm around her shoulder and helped him up. He might be a dick but she wasn't about to leave him lying out here in the woods while those octopus things were launching themselves between the trees. She picked up her gun with her free hand and they lurched forward, Hudson's weight balancing out her gun's weight -- knocking her off balance. She wasn't used to dragging along two hundred and fifty pounds of dumbass.
"How's your air?" she said. "Still clean?"
"Yeah."
"You tell me if anything changes."
"Right."
They both knew it wouldn't matter one way or the other if the second layer of material ripped and let in toxic air; he'd strangle beside her and she'd have no way of helping him.
The thought forced her along.
Fortunately, they hadn't gotten far into the woods, and Vasquez' map led them through the blinding fog. Those yellow leaves were everywhere, streaking across her faceplate, piling up on her gun. She kept them off the best she could, but she was more worried that the leaves meant the octopus things were nearby. Hudson kept his hand pressed against the tear in his suit, and she could hear him breathing in her speaker, short little hisses like steam coming off a gauge.
She dialed up the Sulaco, dialed up Lieutenant Flyn.
"Report," he said.
"Hudson ripped the first layer of his suit," she said, "and hurt his leg. Second suit layer is still intact. We're heading back now."
"Bishop'll be waiting."
They were out of the treeline, which mean the fog was thicker but the leaves were gone. The Sulaco was a dark smudge on the distance, its edges blurred to indistinction. Another dark smudge, smaller, human-shaped, was cutting through the yellow-white haze. Bishop.
"We're here," Vasquez said.
Hudson sighed, and it sounded like the ocean.
Bishop came close enough that she could make him out. No bio suit, not even a face mask to make them feel more at ease. Just a synthetic walking through the toxic atmosphere like he was in a flower garden. Still, he looped Hudson's other arm around his shoulder, relieving some of the weight, and together the three of them hobbled back onboard the ship.
As soon as the airlock was shut tight and the ready light came on, Vasquez ripped off her helmet.
"Is he going to be okay?" she demanded, tossing both gun and helmet off to the side. Hudson was stretched out on the floor, teeth clenched in pain. Bishop slipped off Hudson's helmet, then looked down at his leg.
"We need to get him to medical," he said. "But yes, I think so. Nothing appears broken."
"You hear that, Hudson?" Vasquez said. "Nothing appears broken. You could've walked back yourself."
"Shit." Hudson's voice was strained and thin. "You're the one that wanted to be all up on me."
Bishop helped Hudson to his feet and led him out of the holding bay. Vasquez gathered up her gun and her helmet and went down to the suit rack and changed. She was exhausted, her whole body aching. She thought of it as an adrenaline hangover -- you get too much, and it wipes you out afterwards.
Once she was back in her fatigues she made her way down to the medical bay, where Hudson was stretched out sleeping on the cot, his left thigh wrapped in a bandage. She knew she needed to report back to Lieutenant Flyn but she figured he wouldn't blame her for wanting to check up on her partner. Of course, now that she'd checked up on him, she wasn't too keen to make her way to the command room.
"He's stabilized," Bishop said, his voice coming from behind her. She jumped, which pissed her off: she had the fucking reflexes to shoot one of those octopus things in the fog but a synthetic moving around a medical bay could get the jump on her.
"Fuck, man, stop sneaking up on people like that," she said.
"Oh. Sorry."
Bishop stood beside her and they both stared down at the snoring Hudson.
"Glad to know you got him fixed up. That was fast."
"It wasn't a serious injury." Bishop looked over at her. "It seemed that something had applied constricting pressure to his leg."
Vasquez frowned. "Like a snake?"
"Similar, yes. If you don't mind me asking, did you see what attacked him?"
"Not the one that attacked him exactly, but one of them. Killed it too. Didn't get a good look at it though." She kept her gaze on Hudson while she spoke. He almost looked sweet when he was asleep. Like a little kid. The thought made her want to laugh. "It was kind of like an octopus."
"An octopus?"
"Yeah. Lot of legs." She frowned, trying to remember. "They weren't exactly tentacles, I guess. Sorry, man, but it wasn't really high on my priority list to take an inventory, you know?"
"I completely understand."
"The weird thing," she went on, feeling chatty because of the adrenaline hangover, "was that it seemed like it could, I dunno, fly or something. It was probably just jumping off the trees but it came launching at me through the fucking air." She glanced at Bishop, who was staring at her with that creepy robotic intensity. "Why do you ask?"
"I'm programmed to," Bishop said.
A chill rippled down Vasquez' spine.
"But I was also curious. Hudson should be awake in a few hours if you'd like to speak with him." Bishop smiled and then wandered off, over to a counter set up with microscopes and petri dishes and other science class shit. She stared after him, not sure what to make of their conversation. She thought about Hudson asking why a synthetic was on board. It was standard, like she'd said. But why was it standard?
She shoved the thought out of her head.
Hudson's snores carried on, and they were a reminder not that he was sleeping, but that he was breathing.
Vasquez took her time going down to the command room. She'd probably get it from Sergeant Apone later, but she had that same vague sense of dread she used to get when she was a little girl, waiting to get found out for breaking into the warehouse down the street or sneaking bottles of her dad's vodka with her sister. It wasn't that she was scared exactly, more that she just wasn't in the fucking mood to get chewed out.
So she stopped by the mess hall and polished off some of the leftovers from breakfast, cold scrambled eggs and some burnt toast, then screwed around with the holoscreen in the entertainment room, trying to get it play music instead of movies. By that point she figured she'd put it off long enough already and so she picked her way down to the command room, where Lieutenant Flyn was leaning back in his chair with his feet up on the control panel.
"Private Vasquez," he said. "Been waiting to hear from you."
"Sorry, sir, I wanted to make sure Hudson was all right."
"Which you did." Lieutenant Flyn glanced over his shoulder. "Thirty minutes ago."
Vasquez didn't say anything.
"Where's the corpse?"
The question Vasquez had known was coming even if she hoped it wouldn't.
"I didn't get one, sir."
"That's funny, 'cause Bishop told me you shot one."
The hell? Had Bishop reported their entire conversation to Lieutenant Flyn? She'd been prepared to lie about shooting one of the things. Stupid robot.
"Hudson was injured, sir, and there was a chance that his suit would rip completely. My priority was to get him back safely." Which I did, she thought, although she knew better than to say it out loud.
Lieutenant Flyn didn't say anything for a long time. The command equipment blinked and beeped and Vasquez could see points of green light: her fellow Marines, moving across the planet's surface.
"Your orders," Lieutenant Flyn said, "were to bring back one of the creatures."
Rage flared hot and fast. "So I was supposed to just drop Hudson out in the woods, with those fucking things crawling all over him? I don't leave a man behind, sir, I don't --"
"You're dismissed," Lieutenant Flyn snapped. He wouldn't look at her. Her hands were fists and the muscles in arms went taut. She was ready to fight.
"Did you hear me?" Lieutenant Flyn said.
"Yeah, I heard you."
She stomped out of the room.
Vasquez spent the next couple of hours in the barracks, alternating between watching some dumb old movie on the vidcom and working out, sit-ups and push-ups and punching the sand bag Drake had hung from the ceiling. With Hudson laid up in sick bay she didn't have much choice. Lieutenant Flyn wouldn't let her go out on the surface alone.
She hated being worthless.
It still pissed her off that Bishop had tattled to Lieutenant Flyn about the alien, even though she knew he was just doing what he was supposed to. Not like she asked him to keep it a secret. Hell, it was wrong of her to think about lying to the lieutenant in the first place, but it couldn't fucking matter that much, not bringing one of those things back. They were on an extermination trip, right? And she'd done some exterminating.
She jabbed her fist into the sandbag, bam bam bam, trying to beat all that anxious, paranoid energy out of herself. Nothing added up. It was like Hudson said at breakfast, all this equipment to shoot some fucking bugs? On a planet that wasn't even inhabitable yet?
Her fist struck canvas and she didn't even feel it. Her whole arm was stone. Bam bam bam.
"Jesus, Vasquez, that thing steal your boyfriend or something?"
"Hudson?" Vasquez dropped her fists and turned around. Hudson was leaning up against the doorway, grinning and looking pleased with himself.
"You want to meet the undisputed king of badassdom?" he said.
"I know you're gonna try and claim it's you. It's not."
"Claim?" Hudson scoffed. "Check this shit out." He strolled into the room, jauntily swinging his arms back and forth.
"Congratulations. You can walk like an idiot."
Hudson stopped. "Oh, c'mon, seriously? After the way that thing had me in its death grip?" He clawed his hand as if to demonstrate. "Bishop said I'll be good to go back out tomorrow. We can pick up our wager again." He winked. "Still say I won this round."
"I had to drag your ass back to the ship. I say I won this round."
"Fine. A draw."
Vasquez rolled her eyes, but she was actually glad to see Hudson walking around, knowing it meant she wouldn't be stuck on the ship for another day doing nothing.
The vidcom switched on.
"Vasquez!" Drake shouted. "You in there? Heard you had to cut your patrol short."
Vasquez dropped down in front of the screen. "Wasn't my fault, but yeah."
"Shut up!" Hudson called out behind her.
"We just got back." Drake jerked his head over his shoulder, toward the airlock behind him. "Didn't see anything." He grinned. "Heard you had a run-in. Lucky."
"Did you bring it back with you?" Hicks stuck his head into the screen.
"Yeah," Drake said. "Let's get a look at it."
"I didn't bring it back. Had Hudson to worry about."
"That's legit. Hey, meet us down in the mess hall. We just got our debriefing, shouldn't take long."
Vasquez nodded and switched off the vidcom. Hudson bobbed up and down on his heels. "Only ones who saw anything," he said gleefully.
"Crowe and Frost aren't back yet."
"And you think those two had a run-in? Please."
Vasquez laughed. They left the barracks together and made their way down to the mess hall, where Vasquez was surprised to find a hot meal waiting for them, laid out and steaming on the table.
"Bishop, man," Hudson said. "He can do anything."
"Not what you were saying earlier." She didn't look at him as she spoke, though, just concentrated on filling her plate.
"What, when we were out on the surface? He hadn't fixed up my leg then."
"Fair enough." But Vasquez still couldn't shake that twist of paranoia. It wasn't so much that he was a synthetic but that he was from the company. God, this whole fucking mission was giving her the creeps.
She sat down with her food and Hicks and Drake burst in, shouting greetings and slapping her and Hudson both on the back. They wanted to know what happened, of course, and Hudson launched into the story before she even had a chance to open her mouth. As she expected, he didn't tell it straight, but she had to admit that he made it a hell of a lot more entertaining.
They got so wrapped up in eating and laughing and bullshitting that time dropped away. It was Hicks who noticed, actually, interrupting some story of Hudson's that he'd told about twenty times since it happened back in Basic.
"It's twenty-three hundred," he said.
"What?" Hudson's animated hand gestures subsided and he leaned over the table, frowning. "What do you mean?"
"Nightfall. It was fucking nightfall two hours ago and Crowe and Frost aren't back yet."
The four of them looked at each other. The silence buzzed in Vasquez' ears.
"Command room," Corporal Hicks said and they all scrambled to their feet, chair scraping and clanging. They rushed out of the mess hall and down to the command room, none of them saying anything. Corporal Hicks let them in. Bishop was hunched over the control panel, Sergeant Apone was slouched in the corner, and Lieutenant Flyn was pacing back and forth, his face red. He stopped when they walked in, stared at them. He knew what they were after.
"He's on his way back," he said.
"He?" Vasquez asked.
"Yes." Bishop turned around in his seat. "Private Frost."
"What about Crowe?" The Marines surged forward, crowding around the control panel. Bishop pointed at a little green dot blinking its way across the map.
"We lost communication an hour ago," Bishop said. "I've been trying to repair it but I think the damage was in their bio suits. We weren't able to speak with him, but --"
"I don't understand, where's Crowe?" Corporal Hicks peered down at the map. "Why isn't he on here?"
"I don't know." Bishop's voice was unnerving in its calmness. "His signal blinked out when we lost communication."
"Is he dead?" Hudson asked.
"I'm afraid I don't know that either. The beacon is in the suit and would still work regardless."
The room fell silent. Vasquez took a step back, crossed her arms over her chest. She was cold. Shaking. Even though the room was sweltering. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the map, on that solitary green dot.
"He's passed the treeline," Bishop said. "I'm going out to meet him."
No one said anything. Bishop pushed away from the control panel and left the room. Five minutes later another green dot appeared on the map. The room was so still Vasquez was afraid to breathe. It reminded her of the hottest days of summer, that stifling, humid heat that felt like end of the world.
The dots moved toward each other. When they met, merging momentarily into a smear of light, someone in the room sighed with relief.
What if Bishop broke the communication signals on purpose? Vasquez thought and then, weirdly, felt guilty about. He'd fixed Hudson's leg.
When the two dots began moving back toward the ship, Sergeant Apone was the first to leave the command room, tossing his cigar on the floor and slamming the door open. The rest followed, save for Lieutenant Flyn. Vasquez went last and she glanced over her shoulder at the lieutenant and saw him rubbing his head, his eyes closed, his mouth moving in some whispered, silent prayer.
"Vasquez! C'mon!" Drake, yelling after her. She left the command room, momentarily stunned by the hallway's cool, dry air. She followed the rest of the Marines down to the holding bay. They crowded at the door, peering through the window at the open airlock, at the surface of LV-289 at night. Fog curled into the ship, dissipating beneath the bright lights.
And then Bishop and Frost appeared, Frost walking upright, uninjured as far as Vasquez could see. Bishop closed the airlock and the Marines rushed in. Frost took off his helmet and slumped against the wall.
"We gotta go back," he said.
No one said anything, not even Bishop.
"He's not dead." Frost peered up at them, wiped the sweat from his brow. "But I was afraid to move him. His suit got damaged, big time, and I was afraid of tearing it."
"We lost communication," Bishop said. "I'm not sure we'll be able to find him."
"I can find him," Frost said. "It's not far. We were on our way back when the little fuckers started jumping out of the trees. I managed to get 'em off me, but Crowe's leg snapped and --" He closed his eyes. "I won't leave him out there."
"Hell no," said Hudson. "We don't leave a man behind."
The Marines all nodded and murmured agreements.
"Plus one of those things tried to break my leg," Hudson said. "Need to get revenge."
"It may not be a good idea for you to exert yourself --" Bishop started, but Hudson interrupted him.
"I say we head out now," he said. "There's got to be a spare suit around for me, yeah? We go out as a group, together, and bring him back."
The Marines roared with approval. Vasquez could feel the adrenaline building again, a pressure knotting in her muscles and her chest. After a day, practically, of doing nothing, it was a relief.
"You making plans without me?"
Lieutenant Flynn. He'd slipped into the holding bay without anyone noticing.
"Crowe is down, sir," said Sergeant Apone. "We're not about to leave him."
Lieutenant Flyn didn't say anything, just surveyed them all, one at a time. His eyes were fever-bright. He stopped on Frost and said, "You shoot one?"
"Jesus fucking Christ, seriously?" Vasquez said. Then, as an afterthought: "Sir."
"Vasquez! You fucking watching yourself." Sergeant Apone smacked her against the back of the head -- not hard, just enough for her to know he was there. She scowled.
"Did you?" Lieutenant Flyn asked Frost.
"Sure," said Frost. "Shot a bunch of them. I was trying to get them off Crowe, sir, he's still alive, and --"
"But you didn't bring a corpse back with you."
Frost stared at him for a moment like he didn't understand. Then he shook his head.
"Fuck." Lieutenant Flyn turned away from them. Rubbed his head again. "Hudson's right, you're going out again. Bring back Crowe if you can. But one of you -- and I don't give a shit which one -- is going to bring back one of those fucking aliens." He paused, his chest rising and falling. "Bishop, go with them. Make sure they get it done."
For a moment, Bishop looked almost confused. Vasquez knew it was her imagination. "Of course, sir."
That chill crept down her spine again. He was Weyland-Yutani's equipment, they put him on board.
"I may also need to administer medical attention to Private Crowe," Bishop said.
Lieutenant Flyn nodded at him and gave a grunt of affirmation. Then he said, "What are you all waiting for, boys and girls? Suit up."
At night, LV-289 was an unsettling purple color, like a bruise. Vasquez edged her way through the fog, aware of Hudson on her right and Corporal Hicks on her left. The rest of the Marines were just dots on her map. Frost was in the lead, guiding them toward the forest.
Hudson's voice crackled in her ear. "Not as a cold as the lieutenant was saying."
"It's the suits, jackass." Vasquez swept her gun back and forth, uneasy from the fog. She didn't expect to see one of the octopus things until they were at the treeline, but she also wasn't taking any chances.
Hudson didn't answer. The bio suit was keeping her warm -- the suit and her own looming dread, her own sour sweat. It was good to be out in the field again but at the same time it was dark and impossible to see and Crowe was dying.
"Heading into the trees now," Frost said.
"Roger that." Vasquez tightened her grip on her gun. She imagined all the other Marines saying the same thing, a chorus of affirmatives echoing in Frost's speaker. The trees appeared in the fog, long dark giants against the purple sky.
She switched her speaker to all units. "Watch yourselves," she said. "They attack aerialy, jumping from the trees."
She heard her own chorus of Roger thats.
They moved forward in slow, cautious increments. The fog thinned out some, but those goddamned yellow leaves were still falling. In the darkness they trailed streaks of silvery light.
"The leaves," Vasquez said, speaker still switched to all units. "Be careful. They fell thicker when the things --"
Something moved on the edge of her vision, off to her left, and she swooped her gun, heart hammering. Darkness.
"Vasquez?" Sergeant Apone, voice gruff and distorted through the speaker. "Report."
"I thought I saw something."
Darkness. Leaves falling like a thunderstorm. And then --
"Fuck! There it is again!"
Light. A little orb of light. It flitted between the trees and disappeared.
"I saw it too!" Drake.
"So did I." Sergeant Apone. "That wasn't the alien, was it?"
"No, sir." Vasquez kept staring in the spot where the light had been. It didn't come back.
"There may be multiple lifeforms on this planet," Bishop said, his voice ringing out more clearly than any of the others'.
"Thanks Bishop," said Hudson sarcastically. "That was useful."
"Actually, it was," Vasquez snapped. "We need to know what we're dealing with." The muscles in her hand were cramping from clutching her gun so tightly. "Frost! Are we there yet?"
"We're close."
On they went through the trees. Vasquez spotted two more of those flying lights, hovering off to the sides like they were watching a fucking parade. She hated this planet, hated Weyland-Yutani for wanting to terraform it, hated anybody, preemptively, who'd homestead here once it was inhabitable.
Crowe, she kept reminding herself. We're out here to get Crowe. Not help Weyland-Yutani make their bottom fucking line.
"Found him!" Frost's voice was a triumph. "And he's alive. Just gave me thumbs up." Vasquez let out a long sigh of relief and some of the other Marines switched the speakers to all units just so everybody could hear their whoops of victory. Through the faceplate Vasquez could just make out the silhouettes of Frost and Crowe in a clearing, leaves showering around them like rain. Bishop moved easily through the fog, knelt down beside Crowe, popped open his medical kit.
Maybe he was just here to administer medical attention.
"I'll need a few moments," Bishop said. "I'm going to attempt to set his leg so it will be easier to move him back to the Sulaco."
"How long?" Sergeant Apone asked.
"I'm not sure. Maybe twenty minutes."
Half a curse from Sergeant Apone filtered through her earpiece before he cut it off. A second or two later he came back on: "You heard him. Twenty minutes. Marines, fan out, let him work."
"What about bringing back one of the corpses?" Drake asked.
Vasquez scowled inside her suit.
"We'll worry about that once Crowe's fixed up."
Vasquez and the other Marines swooped around Crowe and Bishop, forming a half-circle of firepower. She tilted her head back as far as she could, trying to look up into the trees. Leaves plastered to her faceplate and she cursed and wiped them away.
Were they falling faster now?
The elation at having found Crowe froze into a sharp spike of fear. The leaves were definitely falling faster. And there were more of them, all flashing in the pale light of the fog.
"Stay alert!" she shouted into her microphone. "Those things are close."
"Who put you in charge?" Drake asked, teasing, she knew, even though his voice crackled with fear.
"She's right," Hudson said. "The leaves started falling when they attacked us."
"Us too," Frost said. "Bishop, you done yet?"
"I'm afraid not."
Vasquez tuned them all out. They didn't require her attention; the forest did, the forest and its moonshower of leaves. Her gun was an extension of her arm. She would protect them all.
Over the microphones, someone screamed.
She didn't know who it was until she heard Corporal Hicks shout Drake's name, and then she whirled in place and she saw the starlight burst of gunfire and she saw the outline of a thing with too many legs and a long, mean face.
She screamed, not out of fear but out of rage, that those fucking things had the nerve to attack her fellow Marines. She wasn't aware she was shooting until the vibrations racketed up her arm.
The alien dropped out of the air.
It was replaced by two more.
Vasquez stopped thinking. She couldn't think; it would only confuse her. She shot. She shot the two aliens out of the sky and then she shot the five more than followed after them, their legs catching in the sallow moonlight, dark blood splattering across her faceplate. Every now and then she caught sight of others' gunfire, or of the dark figure of a Marine flitting off to the side. But in the goddamn bio suit she was isolated. They all were.
Fuck this planet and its toxic air and its local fucking fauna.
Her gun lit up the night. Another alien slopped onto the ground, legs, or tentacles, or whatever, twitching.
Her earpiece crackled.
"I'm finished." Bishop. He almost sounded scared. "He won't be able move quickly, however."
"We'll clear a path." Corporal Hicks.
"Clear a fucking path!" Sergeant Apone. "Look at your maps. We're heading back."
Vasquez could hardly understand what they were saying. She whipped around, scanning the thick, flickering darkness. Gunfire exploded everywhere. Two shapes moved west, one slouched up against the other. No guns. Must be Bishop and Crowe. She surged toward them, aware of a movement above their heads, a pair of glinting eyes. She fired her gun and they both crouched down but the thing was dead, dispersed in a shower of blood.
Clear a path, she reminded herself. Clear a path. Clear a --
Screaming erupted in her earpiece. Someone saying her name. Hudson.
"Hudson!" she shouted. "What the fuck! Report!"
"My leg! Fuck!"
The other Marines had converged on Bishop and Crowe, gunfire leading the way back to the ship.
"Vasquez!"
"I'm coming! Where are you!" She whirled in place, aware of movement overhead. They'd stopped attacking but they were still moving back and forth between the trees. She wiped at her faceplate, trying to get rid of the leaves, the blood.
"I don't know! I can't see anything!"
Her map. It appeared on the inside of her faceplate, the lines darkened from the blood. There he was, a stupid blinking dot. Not far from her. Off to the east. She rushed through the darkness.
"Vasquez! State your position." Sergeant Apone.
"Hudson is hurt, sir. I've got to get to him."
"You didn't answer my question."
Her breath was coming fast and hot, filling up the inside of her helmet. "About half a klick east of you, sir. We'll catch up soon."
"Roger that."
The line went dead. Vasquez followed the map to Hudson, who was leaning against the enormous root of one of the trees, his leg drawn up to his chest, groaning.
"Your suit okay?" she said.
"Suit's fine. It's my leg. One of those things slammed into me and it just started hurting."
A flare of anger. She wanted to blame Bishop but then she remembered him saying Hudson shouldn't exert himself.
"Can you walk?"
"I don't know. Not by myself I don't think. Are those things gone?"
"No." Vasquez knelt beside him and scooped her arm, clumsy from the suit, around his back. He staggered to his feet, gasps of pain coming through her earpiece.
"Hurry." Vasquez didn't like the aliens' sudden retreat. Leaves were falling everywhere. "We gotta get out of here fast."
"Roger that." He hobbled forward, one hand on her non-shooting bicep. Vasquez tilted her head back and through the smear of blood and leaves she saw pale smudges against the purple sky and bright eyes and those eerie spheres of light.
Waiting.
"Did anybody get a corpse?" Hudson's voice short, out of breath.
"Jesus, I don't know."
"Flyn's gonna lose his shit."
"Bishop was supposed to take care of it." Eyes still on the tree canopy. In any other circumstance, it might have been beautiful. All those pale lights.
"He didn't, though. He was wrapped up in helping Crowe. Nobody had one, from what I could tell."
Good, she thought. "The lieutenant can come out here and get one, he wants one so bad."
"Whatever. If you and me bring one back, we'll get all claims to badassdom for at least the next six weeks."
Vasquez didn't give a shit about claims to badassdom. She gave a shit about getting out of the forest before those goddamn octopus things dropped out of the sky.
She didn't feel Hudson's hand on her arm anymore.
"Idiot!" she shouted. "Keep moving!" She whirled around, half-hoping he'd just fallen, that she could just drag him back up and then drag him back to the ship. But no. He was hobbling toward her with an alien corpse slung over his shoulder, his big stupid grin illuminated by the lights from his map.
Behind him, an alien dropped out of the trees.
Vasquez shot it, not thinking, only reacting. Hudson cursed and ducked down but he didn't drop the corpse.
"Fuck!" she screamed. "We've got to run."
"Take it!" Hudson shoved the corpse at her and fired his own gun overhead. She felt something fall beside her. The corpse wasn't as heavy as she expected, like its bones were hollow, and she turned and she ran, seeing on her map that Hudson followed. The aliens fell from the trees and she laid out a blanket of fire, hitting some, missing others. Hudson was falling behind.
She flung the corpse off to the side and then something slammed into her, a heavy stifling weight and a force wrapping around her legs, pulling tighter, tighter --
And then it went limp and slumped away, dead.
She looked up. Not Hudson. Corporal Hicks.
"Leaving you two out here made me nervous," he said.
"Hudson's hurt." She scrambled to her feet, firing up into the trees.
"Figured. Make a run for it. We'll be behind you."
"Roger."
They passed each other in the chaos. She watched him find Hudson on the map, watched their two dots move toward her. Toward the end of the trees. Toward the ship.
She ran.
She fired shot after shot into the darkness.
And then, stupidly, she thought of Hudson, and his claims to badassdom. The fuck did badassdom even mean? But when she almost tripped over one of the corpses laying strewn out in the dirt she picked it up and threw it over her shoulder.
And kept on running.
Vasquez stepped out of the shower, the steam filling her lungs. Every single part of her hurt. Not just the expected parts like her arms and legs, but little things, like the inside of her elbow. Her fingernails. Her eyelashes.
Everything.
She dressed. She'd intended to go back to the barracks, maybe bullshit a little with Drake, but instead she found herself standing in the doorway of the medical bay. Hudson and Crowe were laid out side by side. Crowe was sleeping, his entire right leg wrapped in bandages, but Hudson was awake, sitting upright and eating off a tray.
"How you feeling?" she asked.
"Fucking awesome." He slurped at his stew. "Who do you think won the wager this time?"
"You mean who shot one of those things first?"
"Or who shot more."
"I've got no idea, man." She dragged a chair across the room and sat down beside his bed. Bishop was off in the corner, hunched over the laboratory table. He glanced at the noise of the chair but didn't say anything.
Hudson finished off his stew and shoved the tray off to the side. "Lieutenant Flyn was in here earlier," he said. "Thanked me for bringing one of the aliens back."
She didn't miss a beat. "You did good."
Hudson looked up at her and for the first time his face was stone-cold serious. "You could've taken the credit," he whispered.
"What credit?" she said. "It was your thing. You wanted it."
"Apparently the company's gonna give me some kind of bonus."
They both went silent. Hudson was still looking earnest, which Vasquez found unsettling as hell. She knew what he was thinking, though. What he wanted to offer.
"You keep it," she said.
Hudson blinked at her. "You sure about that? I mean, you're the one who --"
"I don't want it."
"What? Why the hell not?"
"I just don't." She wasn't gonna try and explain. Weyland-Yutani was after something but it wasn't exterminating the local wildlife. When she'd gotten in two hours ago, Lieutenant Flyn had taken one look at the corpse lying in the holding bay, pale and scaly in death, and said, "That'll do."
That'll do? Vasquez had thought. That'll fucking do?
And then Bishop had carted the thing off and Vasquez had known, just some old street intuition, that the corpse was the real reason they were out here. That one fucking corpse. And who knew what a company like Weyland-Yutani would want with a dead alien.
Left a bad taste in her mouth.
"I'm not gonna forget this, Vasquez."
"Yeah, well, you can pay me back once we're on Earth again."
Hudson laughed, but she could tell he was gonna do it. Somehow.
She stayed with him for the next hour so, swapping stories they'd both told before and watching a movie on the vidcom. Then Hudson started dragging and she knew he needed to sleep off his injury, so she snatched the vidcom away from him and made like she was gonna walk out of the medical bay. But she didn't. Bishop was still off in the corner. Working on that thing, she was certain of it.
And she wanted to know. She wanted to know for sure.
She approached Bishop cautiously, like he was a wild animal. He didn't seem to notice her.
"Bishop," she said, loudly, and that's when he looked up, eyes big and honest.
"Private Vasquez," he said, smiling. "I'm glad you made it back all right."
"Yeah. Sure." She folded her arms over her chest. The alien was spread out on the counter in front of him, split down the middle like a rotisserie chicken, blood and guts strewn across the metal surface. The blood was dark purplish-blue, almost black, and thick and clotted.
"Why'd Lieutenant Flyn ask us to bring one of those things back?" she said.
"Because Weyland-Yutani told him to."
Well. That had been easier than she expected.
"It's why you were sent out here," he said. "Didn't you know?"
"Lieutenant Flyn told us it was an extermination trip," she said. "You know that. You were there."
Bishop turned back to the alien but he didn't move to do anything with it. "Yes, that was the story. I remember now."
"The story."
Bishop nodded. He tilted his head, still looking down at the alien.
"The fuck is going on, Bishop? You're supposed to do whatever I tell you, right? If I like, command it or whatever? Tell me what's going on."
He looked over at her. "I would tell you anyway, because you asked."
That took her aback. "What?"
"I serve in the United States Colonial Marine Corp," he said mildly, like that explained everything. "What would you like to know?"
She gestured at the remains of the alien. "That," she said. "Why did Lieutenant Flyn have such a bug up his ass about bringing one of those things back?"
"Like I said, it's the reason we were here."
"But why?"
"Weyland-Yutani required it for research purposes," Bishop began, and Vasquez had to resist the urge to shout I knew it like a character in some idiot cartoon.
"They're looking for something," Bishop went on. "A particular life form."
"This?" She glanced back down at the corpse. The blood glistened in the laboratory lights. "What do they want with it?"
"No, not this." Bishop gave a weird sad smile. "It's a fascinating creature, but not what they're looking for."
"What are they looking for?"
"I'm not certain, actually." He shrugged. "They didn't program me with that information."
"Oh." She paused. "So I guess you don't know what they want with the thing either?"
"As I said, research purposes. Weapons development."
Vasquez frowned. She didn't know what to say. All this time she'd been right to be suspicious, right that they were being lied to. She wondered if it was always gonna be like this, serving in the Corp. Going out and risking your life and risking the lives of your friends just 'cause some bigshot up in the lunar office wanted a monster for research purposes. That they weren't even gonna tell you about.
Not her job to ask questions, she knew that. But she was gonna think them anyway. And at least Bishop gave it to her straight.
"So now what?" she said. "We aren't sticking around here, are we? If it's not what they wanted?"
"No. I imagine Lieutenant Flyn will be informing you soon. We're going back to Earth."
"Not much of a trip, huh?"
"No, not really."
They fell silent.
"I'm very glad everyone made it back okay," Bishop said, and the change in subject was just awkward enough Vasquez suspected it was caused by something in his programming.
"Yeah, me too."
He smiled at her and she actually grinned back at him, because you know what? She really was glad everybody made it back. "I guess Crowe's going to be all right?"
"Oh yes. It's good we went for him. He may not have survived the night. The creatures didn't seem to see him as a threat because he was immobile, but I'm not certain how long that would have continued. And the damage to his leg was extensive. Multiple breaks."
"Jesus."
"He'll be fine, though."
"Glad to hear it."
They stared at each other for a second, and then a paper airplane folded out of a mess hall napkin came cascading down from the ceiling. It landed in the middle of the alien's dissected midsection.
"Hudson!" Vasquez shouted.
Bishop reached over and plucked the airplane out of the alien.
She whirled around and stomped over to Hudson, who laughed wildly in his bed until she grabbed a pillow off one of the unoccupied beds and smacked him hard in the face with it.
"Did I interrupt a moment?" he asked.
She hit him again.
"Ow."
"It's a fucking pillow, man," she said. "It didn't hurt."
He laughed. She brandished the pillow at him and he sort half cowered into his mattress, which made her laugh. For a moment she considered telling him what Bishop had told her, but she decided not to. Couldn't say why. Maybe she wasn't sure he'd care. Maybe she didn't want to ruin the thrill of his claim to ultimate badassdom. Maybe it just didn't matter, because they were Marines and whether they were on an extermination trip or some super-secret corporate espionage bullshit run they were going to watch out for each other and keep each other safe. And Weyland-Yutani had fuck all to do with it.
"Seriously," Hudson said, "did I interrupt a moment with you two? 'Cause I was really trying --"
She hit him one last time.
"Get some rest," she said. "I'll be challenging you for the title of Most Badass once you get out of medical, and I want it to be a fair fight."
"Not much of a challenge."
"Yeah, we'll see."
Hudson snickered, and that was how Vasquez knew it was the same, it was always going to be the same. Because there was nothing here that Weyland-Yutani could take away.
She smiled.