The Bigger Fish
(an ALIENS story)
By Christopher Paul Halliday
Copyright ã 1999 Chris Halliday
All Rights Reserved
She tore her gaze away from its blank eyes and focussed instead on the things bulging abdomen. Judging by the way the lights reflected from the plating visible beneath the bristles, her armour had fully hardened. She was mature now, and ready to breed.
"Beautiful, isn't she?" asked Doctor Kielly.
"Yes doctor," the intern replied dutifully.
Kielly glanced at her for a moment. She looked more like a beach bunny than a genetics student, but she knew her place and was more than willing to... accommodate his needs in order to facilitate her scramble up the corporate ladder. Kielly knew the spider terrified her, but he still insisted that she attend him when he visited. It wasn't that he was insensitive to her fear. Quite the opposite.
He revelled in it.
Kielly rapped on the glass between him and the spider, but she didn't react. Though Kielly knew she probably hadn't heard him - the glass was several inches thick - he felt a pang of disappointment.
"Lets see how she fights. Bring in the xenomorph."
"Yes doctor," the intern said, biting her lip.
Moving to the main
console, she activated the handling protocols that regulated the secure
cells. Seconds later a hatch at the rear of the holding cell slid open,
releasing a rush of compressed vapour. For a moment nothing moved within
the darkness. The great spider tensed, somehow sensing danger to herself
and the babies she was yet to have. The intern shuddered again, feeling
pity for the spider in spite of her revulsion. Then something dark slid
into the cell, and the spider froze.
The intern couldn't take
her eyes off the new arrival. The creature was a nightmarish mockery of
humanity; a horrible, inside out shadow of mankind. Since a number of Rim
colonies had been lost to these creatures, they had become the face of
the bogeyman, the monster that humans had always been told did not exist.
The xenomorphs skeletal tail
twitched as it scented the air of this new environment. And then it started
to drool.
In a blur of motion, the
alien leapt at the spider, secondary fangs sliding into place. The spider
scuttled back against the wall in apparent alarm as the midnight black
attacker tore into her web... and stuck. Enraged, the alien thrashed against
the inch thick strands of webbing that held it in place, but succeeded
only in tangling itself still further. The whipping tail slashed and stabbed
at the web, and was itself secured in seconds.
"Incredible," muttered Kielly,
more to himself than his intern. He scribbled an observation down on the
pad at his desk, then double-checked that the recorders where getting all
of this encounter. "She's actually in danger of surviving this. We may
have found a predator for the xenomorphs. We'll have to let Rigel Station
know to start harvesting..."
The alien was driving itself into a frenzy, but its efforts seemed futile. After observing its attacker for a moment longer, the spider moved towards the alien. With malignant deliberation, she began to cocoon her foe.
When the alarms activated, Kielly was so fascinated it took him a moment to realize what was happening. The cool feminine voice of the main computer confirmed his worst fears. "Alert Status. Security breach. Intruders detected. Weapons fire detected. Security teams to section four..." The room pulsed with a crimson glow.
"The rebels?" asked the intern, her blue eyes wide.
Kielly cursed. "Who else is it going to be? The fucking Jehovah's Witnesses?"
Whatever else Doctor Kielly said was lost in the explosion that followed. The locking mechanism destroyed, the lab door hissed open. Before Kielly could utter another word, a blaze of pulse fire punched though his face and splashed his exceptional brain against the wall, where whatever great ideas lay unrealized within it became simply another crimson smear. The intern sucked in breath to scream before the rattle of gunfire silenced her forever.
The figure that stepped through the smoke and into the lab was a big man, tall and heavily built. A hard man in hard times, his weathered skin bore the marks of countless battles, some fresh, some not. Quickly, professionally, he scanned the room for survivors. Then he turned and stared through the glass into the holding cell. The spider paused in her wrapping of the struggling xenomorph, as if sensing the presence of another predator.
The big man laughed
softly. "Son of a bitch. Enjoy your meal, honey." He flipped open a pouch
at his waist and slid out a block of waxy orange material. This he placed
on the main console, before sliding a thin tube of metal into it. Having
placed the explosive, he tapped a number into the small keypad linked to
the detonator. Six minutes. More than enough.
Jason Hunter walked away
from the base as it burned, a grim smile of satisfaction twisting his face
as he listened to the numerous secondary detonations behind him. This part
of Earth was largely uninhabitable, and after the nuking of Seattle, the
whole place had become a desert. The perfect place to hide, and the perfect
place for the Company to bury its dirtier operations. Hunter spat into
the sand, and lit up a cigar.
They couldn't hide forever.
Not anymore.
The Hunter was coming.
Hours later, as the rubble
and wreckage began to cool, the great spider dug her way out. Her armour
was cracked, the rents leaking blood and other fluids, and she'd left a
leg somewhere below. It didn't matter. For the sake of her species, she
would survive. She had to survive. Her abdomen rippling with the spasmodic
movement of her progeny, she looked briefly up at the stars, then west,
towards the sea.
It would be time soon.
Then she scurried into the
night, leaving only claw prints in the desert sand.