Waiting for God

The Bigger Fish
(an ALIENS story)

By Christopher Paul Halliday

Research Station Gamma

21:30 Hours

The intern shuddered. Damn, but the thing was ugly. It squatted malevolently at the heart of its web, jet black skin oozing with
heat regulating secretions. As if it could sense her disgust, the thing swivelled its stubby head until its primary eyes seemed to be staring right at her, while its mandibles absently worked food into a pulp and pushed the soggy chunks into the grinding section of its mouth. Almost teasingly, it flexed one of its eight bristling legs and tapped the glass with a powerful split claw. The intern shivered again, knowing in her heart the thing was looking for a way out of the holding cell.

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.