Aliens - Wipeout

"Who’s the military spook?"

Sanchez took his eyes away from his ship’s system controls and looked back as Johnson and Tucker entered the cramped, dark cockpit. "We’ve got us a military cargo this time guys. They sent along a babysitter to watch over us. I guess they don’t think we’ll do our job."

"What’s the cargo?" Tucker asked, plopping into the co-pilot seat next to Sanchez. Johnson stood behind them, his tall frame mere millimeters from the gray plate steel of the ceiling.

"Don’t know. Some top secret something-or-other I suppose. What does it matter?"

"Aren’t you worried that we’re carrying something dangerous or hazardous?" Johnson was the newest member of the crew and didn’t know that Sanchez never cared about the contents of his cargo. Sanchez delivered whatever freight he was paid to deliver and never asked any questions of his clients. He flew the biggest freighter in the galaxy and couldn’t afford to be choosy.

"In this line of work," he told Johnson, turning back to the heads up display and the stars beyond the forward window, "you can’t be picky. What does it matter as long as we get paid?"

"Just curious, that’s all."

"Well, you know what they say about curiosity," said Tucker, fiddling with a couple of knobs on the console.

"What’s the guy’s name?" Johnson asked.

"Rico, I think."

"He kind of freaks me out, Sanchez. Have you talked to him yet?"

"Yeah, I know what you’re talking about? He’s a pretty strange fella. Got some weird eyes. When he looks at you it’s as if he’s hiding something."

"By the way, have any of you seen Dr. Williams?"

Johnson poked his head out into the corridor, his voice echoing through the huge ship. "I think he’s with Rico down in the Medlab. I’m going to go see what their up to."

"Don’t be too nosy," Tucker said. "Whatever it is were hauling is military, we sure don’t need you spoiling any future hauls because you wont quit asking questions."

"So, what do you think about him?" Sanchez asked Tucker after Johnson had left.

"I think he’s going to work out real good, just as long as he quits asking so many damn questions."

"He sure knows how to run a loader."

"He sure does. He loaded twice as many containers as you did!" Tucker grinned at his friend.

"I don’t think so."

"Come on, Sanchez. Face it, you’re getting old."

"I’m only a month older than you."

"Well, we’re both getting old then." The two of them carried on as their laughter reverberated throughout the freighter.

Johnson didn’t go to the Medlab, but ran quietly down the main corridor to the first of ten docking bays. He slipped inside and turned on the overhead lights. The room was lined with row upon row of short, fat cylinder shaped containers. Each container was made of a dark, web-like material that looked a lot like fiberglass. He pushed against one of the cylinders. It didn’t give to his pushing. Whatever it’s made of, it’s not anything that he’d ever seen before.

He brushed his hand over it and felt a slight vibration from within. He jerked his hand away and backed up a couple of steps.

"What the…"

There’s something inside, he thought. Something moved in there.

Johnson examined the lid. It was made of heavy plate steel much like that which covered the outer hull of the freighter, and was clamped to the rim of the container with pressure levers. The lids were made to withstand tremendous force, either from without or within, when the pressure levers were locked in place, but when the levers were released, the lid could be easily removed.

Johnson almost thought about not removing one of the lids and he almost walked away, but being the curious person that he was, he just had to know what was inside. What could possible be in there that they would need such sturdy containers? Weapons? Bombs? He released the first pressure lock, then the next, and removed the lid.

Dry steam rose from within the dark confined of the container, there was an unmistakable burning smell of sulfur in the air around him. Johnson almost choked, but he held his breath and glanced inside.

There was a large egg shaped object inside. It was coated with a thin, semitransparent skin, which breathed and pulsed in synch with whatever creature resided within it. Johnson reached in and touched the egg’s surface. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. He brushed his fingers across the top and jerked his hand away as the egg split apart and opened like a flower. Inside, a small, membranous creature stirred. It was pink and slimy, like a newborn baby. Multiple purple veins snaked across its skin like a roadmap.

Johnson leaned over the container for a closer look. The creature within leaped out of its cocoon and wrapped its long, spindly legs around his head.

Johnson never had time to scream.

"Hey, Williams. You there?" Sanchez said into the intercom. He smiled at Tucker and they both tried not to laugh. Williams hated it when they didn’t refer to him as Dr. Williams.

"Yeah, I’m here. What do you want?"

An hour had passed since Johnson had left the control deck and Sanchez had a few things for the youngster to do. "Send Johnson up here, will ya?"

"Johnson’s not here," came the reply from the Med-lab.

"He’s not? He said he was going down there over an hour ago."

"Well he’s not here."

"Where could he have gotten off too?" Sanchez looked over at Tucker and their eyes widened as they realized what was going on.

"That boy’s going to get himself into some big trouble if he doesn’t stop nosing around where he’s not supposed to. Where do you think he’s gone off to?" Tucker rose with Sanchez close behind him.

"Let’s try the docking bay. Hold on a second." Sanchez turned back to the intercom and called Williams and Rico to join them. "I think we may have a problem."

"We’ll be right there," said the steel cold voice of Rico.

"Man, that guy freaks me out."

"I know what you mean, Tucker."

The four of them met at the door to docking bay one.

"He’s in there."

"How do you know that, Tucker?"

Tucker was leaning over the computer console by the door. "The lights are on inside."

"Step aside, please." Rico stepped forward and pulled a small handgun from a holster under his right arm as the others got out of his way. "Would you open the door, please, Mr. Tucker."

The door hissed open and there, on the floor to the left, was Johnson’s body.

Something was attached to his face.

"What the hell is that?" Sanchez asked, bending over the limp body on the floor.

"Step away from it, Sanchez." Rico pulled the captain up and pushed him back toward the door, then told Williams to go back to Med-lab and get a gurney.

"What is it?" Tucker asked.

"Xenomorph," was all Rico had to say.

"What’s going on, Rico? We were told this was a top-secret delivery and listed as ‘need to know’. Well, now we need to know. What is that thing and why are we delivering them to Earth?" Sanchez wasn’t at all happy with the way things were going. He had never before had a problem this big, and he was afraid what would happen if he didn’t handle this situation with the utmost care. Rico still held the gun in his right hand and that made Sanchez even more nervous. The creature attached to Johnson’s face didn’t appear to be going anywhere, so he knew that Rico was still brandishing the gun just in case he needed it against Sanchez and his crew. "Answer me, Rico!"

"Sanchez, look at his hand." Tucker pointed at the military man’s gun hand. A milky white layer of liquid was oozing out from beneath Rico’s fingertips.

"He’s a damn android! Tucker, go get a weapon, now."

"Don’t…" Rico shouted, but Tucker had already ducked from the room, just as Williams entered from a rear door.

"What’s all the noise about?" He asked, glancing up from a chart he was reading. "Rico, why are you armed?"

Rico lifted the gun and motioned for Williams to move over by Sanchez. "You’ve just made my job that much more difficult. Do you know that, Sanchez?"

"What? What did we do?"

"This." Rico pointed to the metal table that held Johnson’s body. The creature attached to his face breathed slowly and it’s long tail tightened it’s grip around the young man’s neck. It acted as if it knew that Rico had just made reference to it. Rico moved to a bank of computers and pulled a long wire from beside the keyboard and plugged it into a port hidden behind a mole in his forearm. "There’s nothing you can do now. Everything’s already been set into motion."

"What, Rico? Tell us what you’re doing?"

"Rico! Drop the gun!" Tucker stood in the doorway again, an assault rifle aimed at Rico’s head. "Drop it now."

"You’re not allowed to harm human’s," Williams piped up. "Androids are programmed to protect human’s."

"There’s something different about me though, Dr. Williams. If you must know, I’ve been reprogrammed. Nothing can change now. Death, for Earth, is inevitable." Rico lifted the gun to his head and fired. A spray of white mist exploded onto the wall as his finger repeatedly sent bullet after bullet through his computer brain.

Sanchez ran forward and ripped the gun out of Rico’s spasoming grip. "Tucker, get over here." Tucker through down the rifle and knelt to the floor next to his captain. "Williams, get us a medical kit. I need a knife."

"What are you going to do, Captain?"

"I’ve got to get his CPU out of his chest cavity while there’s still power keeping it intact. We’ve got to find out what he was up to."

Williams arrived seconds later with a plastic sealed set of surgical tools. Sanchez ripped into it and found the biggest blade he could, cut through Rico’s shirt then inserted the blade into the upper part of Rico’s chest, slicing downward to the belly.

"What are we looking for?" Tucker asked, as the two men began to lift liquid filled artificial organs from the chest cavity and toss them onto the floor.

"It’s a small, black box. It should be located somewhere close to the spine."

"Here it is."

"Good. Williams, get a battery pack, we’ve got to get some power to this thing." Sanchez cleaned away more of the white muck from around the CPU and found the positive and negative power leads leading to the box. "Hurry up, Williams!"

"Here, here it is." Sanchez took the battery and clipped it to the power leads, then he snipped the connections and removed the CPU from Rico’s body.

"Tucker, get this connected to the main computer and find out what’s going on with these creatures."

"What creature?" Williams said, pointing at Johnson’s body.

Tucker and Sanchez turned to look.

The creature that had been hugging Johnson’s face was gone…

"Sanchez, you two get up here."

Sanchez and Williams had been looking for the creature that had been attached to Johnson’s face, but to no avail.

"Be right there," said Sanchez over the intercom. He and Williams burst through the door a minute later. "What’s going on, Tucker?"

"It’s an invasion plan, Sanchez! We’re delivering an army to wipe out the Earth! And you know what else?"

"You mean, that’s not the bad news?" Williams asked.

"No. The bad news is that Rico has sabotaged the ship. He was reprogrammed by another race to deliver these creatures to Earth. We can’t turn around…we can’t self-destruct…the ship has been programmed to land in Japan, the heaviest populated area on the planet and all the cargo bay doors are ordered to open and lock in place. Communications are down, too. We can’t even warn them. We’re stuck on this damn ship and there’s nothing we can do about it."

An alarm began to howl throughout the ship. "It’s Johnson. I’ve got to get back to Medical and check on his condition."

"Ok, Williams, but keep the intercom open. Let us know if anything changes. We’ll try and figure out a way to stop this mess."

"That’s the only way I know of, Sanchez. Rico’s covered every corner, there’s nothing we can do to stop this ship from landing unless we blow it up ourselves."

"What do we have to do?" Sanchez sat back in the chair, he and Tucker had been stirring over this for hours now, and this seemed to be their only option.

"We have to manually close off the cooling system. The engines are state-of-the-art and they won’t overheat without shutting off, but I think they’ll get to the point that there so unstable, that if we place some charges along the cooling system and engines, it should set off a chain reaction of explosions that will destroy the ship."

"It’s a long shot, isn’t it?"

"Yes, but I think it will work."

"What’s that?" Sanchez leaned forward in his seat, listening to the strange sounds coming from the intercom speaker. "Sounds like someone’s choking. Come on…"

They rushed down to Medical as fast as they could.

Sanchez entered the room as Johnson screamed again. The young man was still lying on the metal examination table, but his back was arched into the air as his body clenched with another spasm of pain.

"What’s wrong with him?" Tucker yelled as he and Sanchez tried to help the Doctor hold Johnson down. Just as the question left his mouth, Johnson fell back to the table and a strange cracking sound snapped within his chest. His sternum crunched outward as Sanchez, Tucker, and Williams each stepped back from the table.

There was a long, awkward silence that stretched through the room like the finale note of a symphony where the conductor takes his bow before leaving, only to return minutes later for the encore. But this encore was anything but music. Johnson shrieked as his chest split open in a rainbow of blood that instantly covered the small room and a small, black creature fell out of his chest and to the floor in a heap of steaming blood and gore. It hissed at them then was gone, streaking between their legs and out into the main corridor.

"What the hell was that?" Tucker asked.

"I don’t know," said Williams. "I’ve been watching it grow at a tremendous pace inside his chest. I stepped out for a moment, and when I returned, Johnson was convulsing violently."

"Now what do we do?" Tucker asked.

"We blow up the ship. Right now…"

Something was stalking them. The three of them could hear it crawling through the air ducts above them.

"What is that?" Sanchez asked.

"You think it’s that other creature?" Tucker asked, pointing his rifle at the ceiling.

"Can’t be. Whatever’s up there sounds too big to be that thing." The noise disappeared across to the far side of the room. Sanchez turned away and set the last timer. "Ok, it’s done."

"Now what do we do?" Williams threw down the empty bag that had contained the explosive charges and followed Tucker and Sanchez out into the hallway beyond the engine room.

Sanchez closed, then locked the door. "We wait."

She grew at an incredible rate.

Her body was made to kill as acid seethed through her veins. So even in her own death, she would be the bringer of death. She was the ultimate killing machine. Before long, she would have an army of her own, but first, she had to take care of this situation. The human hosts thought that they could destroy what her kind had planned so hard to accomplish. She stopped at each of the crude explosives throughout the engine room and disabled them one by one. She opened the cooling system back up, then turned back to the dark ship. Hissing in triumph, she proceeded to stalk the remaining humans. Soon, they too would be hosts themselves and then…

Then…

Then she would be a queen…