River of Pain Page 4

  It was one of them.

  She felt it inside her, invading, squirming inside her ribcage as it prepared to be born in sick, evil mockery of the daughter she had lost. She flipped back on the bed in agony, thrashing her arms. Burke tried to hold her down, shouting for help. She knocked a glass from his hand and heard it shattering on the floor. Her drip stand fell, ripping a needle from her arm.

  Others rushed into the room. They didn’t know what was wrong and there was no way she could tell them, no way to explain, other than to plead with them to help.

  “Please!” she said. “Kill me!”

  It pushed and bulged, cracking ribs, stretching skin, and through the white-hot blaze of agony she rolled up her gown and saw—

  * * *

  Ripley snapped awake in her bed, hand clutched to her chest. She felt rapid, fluttering movement, but it was only the beating of her heart.

  Reality crashed in, and it was awful. She looked from the window and saw the beautiful curve of the Earth. So near and yet so far—but that no longer mattered. To Ripley it no longer felt like home.

  The small screen on the med-monitor unit beside her bed flickered into life, and her nurse’s face appeared.

  “Bad dreams again?” she asked. “You want something to help you sleep?”

  “No!” Ripley snapped. “I’ve slept enough.” The nurse nodded and the screen went blank.

  Jonesy had been sleeping on the bed with her. The medics didn’t like it, but Burke had persuaded them that it would do her good. After the shock she’s had, she had heard him telling them. She supposed she should have been grateful to him, but her first opinion stuck.

  She didn’t like the little fuck.

  “Jonesy,” she said, picking up the cat and cuddling him to her. “It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s over.”

  But that dark, heavy weight remained within her, something very much a part of her and yet unknown. And in saying those calming words to the cat, she was only trying to persuade herself.

  5

  ROUGH TERRAIN

  DATE: 10 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1022

  Two marines awaited Brackett on the surface. They saluted as he came down the ramp and he returned the gesture, striding hurriedly toward them.

  “Welcome to Acheron, Captain,” the first said. She was a tall woman with skin nearly as dark brown as Brackett’s, and the pale line of an old scar across her left cheek. She gestured to the short, barrel-chested marine beside her, a pale man with bright orange hair and thick goggles covering his eyes. “I’m Lieutenant Julisa Paris. This is Sergeant Coughlin—”

  “Nice to meet you both,” Brackett replied. “And thanks for coming out into the storm to greet me, but let’s continue this inside.”

  Sgt. Coughlin took his duffel with one hand, lugging it with an ease that bespoke notable strength, and the three of them hurried toward the nearest door, which led into a two-story gray building whose windows were long horizontal slits, some covered by heavy metal weather shielding.

  “Hate to break it to you, Cap,” Lt. Paris said, gesturing around them, “but this crap? This is a typical day out here.” She led the way inside, stopped at the entrance to let them pass, and then slammed the door behind them. The sound of the scouring wind died instantly and the door sealed with a hiss.

  White lights flickered and grew brighter. Brackett looked around at the clean, wide corridor that went deep into the building. Music played quietly from overhead speakers—early 22nd century jazz—and the captain decided he could have done worse. There were a lot of command posts where it would be almost impossible not to develop at least low-level claustrophobia. There’d be room to move here, and people to get to know—civilians and marines alike.

  “Okay, let’s do this right,” he said, shaking hands with Paris and Coughlin. “Demian Brackett. Your new CO. And I figure since you two came out to greet me, that gives me three options. You’re either good marines, suck-ups, or you drew the short straw. Which is it?”

  Coughlin let out a barking laugh, his face reddening. “Oh, I’m definitely a suck-up,” he said, hefting his burden. “I’m carrying your damn bag.”

  “And you, Lieutenant?” Brackett said, arching an eyebrow as he glanced at Paris.

  A smile flickered across her features, but only one side of her mouth lifted. On the left side, beneath the scar, the muscles did not seem to respond.

  “Give it time, Captain,” Paris said. “I’m sure you’ll figure me out.”

  “Fair enough. Lead the way.”

  As Lt. Paris guided him deeper into the building, Coughlin began to rattle off what he apparently considered the amenities of Hadley’s Hope, including fresh greenhouse vegetables, a game room, vast, incomplete subterranean levels with plenty of room for running, and a cook who was—the sergeant claimed—a virtuoso when it came to Italian pastries.

  The colony was only in its nascent stages. Someday it would be a sprawling hub, as Weyland-Yutani continued to promote expansion into this quadrant. Both the company and the government supported the scientific research that was already going on here, but eventually the real value of Hadley’s Hope would be as a way station or port.

  “I’ve gotta say,” Coughlin went on, “it doesn’t hurt that there are some lovely women among the colonists.”

  He seemed to catch himself, hitched Brackett’s duffel higher on his shoulder, and shot a quick worried glance toward Paris.

  “Say, Cap… our last CO was kind of a hardass when it came to, uhm, fraternizing with the colonists. That gonna be a problem with you?”

  Brackett had given it some thought when he’d first received the assignment. While he didn’t want the drama of romantic and sexual entanglements between his marines and the colonists, he didn’t see how he could effectively prevent them. Better to have things out in the open than deal with the foolishness of people trying to maintain covert relationships.

  “I’m not in favor,” he said, “but I’d rather have you sleeping with the colonists than with other marines. There are regulations for a reason. I don’t want you mooning over Lt. Paris in the midst of an op, and stumbling off a cliff.”

  Coughlin blinked, mouth gaping.

  “Me an’ the Loot? Nah, Captain, there’s nothing like… I mean I wouldn’t… well not that I wouldn’t, but…”

  Paris started to laugh and shook her head. Brackett had maintained a straight face, but Coughlin saw Paris’s expression and blushed furiously.

  “You’re screwing with me.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Brackett admitted. “I’m screwing with you.”

  Coughlin sighed. “Nice one, Cap. I see how it’s gonna be.”

  “So, I’m not going to have any trouble with you, Sergeant Coughlin?”

  “Not with him,” Lt. Paris said. “But we’ve got our share of meatheads.”

  “Care to give me a heads-up?” Brackett said. “Let me know who to look out for?”

  Paris didn’t reply. Any trace of a smile vanished from her face. As she reached a door and keyed it open, she wore an expression that said she regretted having spoken.

  * * *

  As the three of them moved deeper inside the colony, they passed several civilians. Brackett heard laughter down a side corridor, and glanced over to see a pair of children doing cartwheels along the floor. That would take some getting used to—having kids around.

  “What about you, Cap?” Coughlin said.

  Brackett furrowed his brow. “What about what, Sarge?”

  “You got someone in your life? Someone you left behind?”

  Ahead, a row of high windows looked in on the spacious command block, where security and operations personnel sat at workstations and studied display screens. In the middle of the room, a heavyset white man appeared to be dressing down a scraggly, bearded young guy who held a blueprint scroll in his hand.

  “Administration,” Lt. Paris said. “That’s Al Simpson. You’re catching him on one of his better days.”

/>   Simpson’s face turned red as he yelled at the young fellow. Paris didn’t seem to be joking about this being one of the colonial administrator’s better days, though. Brackett hoped the man wasn’t going to be a problem. He didn’t do well with civilian interference.

  Paris caught Simpson’s attention, and the man gestured to indicate that he’d be out in a moment.

  “Seems like quite the charmer,” Brackett said.

  “He’s not so bad,” Lt. Paris mused. “But I wouldn’t want to have to answer to him.”

  A companionable silence fell among the three marines as they waited in the corridor. Curious civilians smiled or nodded at the newly arrived CO as they passed. Coughlin slid the duffel to the ground and leaned against the wall.

  Brackett turned to the Sergeant.

  “The answer’s no, by the way.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There isn’t anyone I left behind.”

  Which wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either.

  He’d had mixed feelings about this command from the very beginning. He’d been stationed on colonies before—each one maintained a small marine detachment assigned by the United States government, the same way the Colonial Marines offered protective services to all signatories of the United Americas pact.

  In recent years, Weyland-Yutani—who owned or exerted influence over what seemed like half the universe—had gotten into the colonization business. The rumors about their business practices were utterly appalling, yet the realities were bad enough. Could you call it corruption, he had often wondered, if the malice and greed were purely intentional—part of the foundation of the business? Hadley’s Hope was a joint endeavor between the government and the company, and he didn’t like the idea of taking orders from corporate stooges.

  There was another reason why being assigned to LV-426 had unsettled him.

  Sgt. Coughlin had asked if he had left anyone behind, and Brackett hadn’t been lying when he’d said no. He hadn’t left anyone behind on Earth, but years ago, when he had joined the Colonial Marines, he’d been forced to break off a relationship with a woman he loved. She’d gone on to find a new life with another man. By the time he’d returned home for a furlough—hoping at least to say hello, to see her smile—she and her new husband had left the planet entirely.

  Now, somehow, their paths were slated to cross again. His old girlfriend and her husband had been among the first colonists to arrive on Acheron more than a dozen years before. Brackett wondered if she still had the same smile, and whether or not she’d be happy to see him.

  Her name had been Anne Ridley in those days.

  * * *

  DATE: 10 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1105

  Curtis Finch felt like strangling his brother. He might’ve considered actually doing it, except that if he took his hands off of the land crawler’s steering wheel, they’d have been blown into a ditch.

  “I want off, man,” Otto said, bracing himself on the dashboard with both hands as the storm pummeled the six-wheeled vehicle with gusts of wind like the fists of a giant.

  A burst of derisive laughter came from the back seat. The two Colonial Marines had been silent for long minutes while Curtis navigated them down out of the rugged hills, but now Sgt. Marvin Draper bent forward, icy eyes glaring at the elder Finch.

  “You wanna get out here, be my guest,” Draper sneered. “Nut job.”

  Otto flushed red as he whipped around to glare at both Draper and the gravely quiet, dark-eyed Pvt. Ankita Yousseff.

  “Shut yer trap, Draper. I said off, not out. Off, off, off. Off this godforsaken rock! I want to go home.”

  Draper let his restraints pull him back against the rear seat. He smiled, then spoke out of the corner of his mouth, addressing Pvt. Yousseff.

  “Otto wants his mommy.”

  “Our mother’s dead,” Otto snapped, crying out as a gust lifted the left side of the crawler off the ground for a second before it crashed back down and the vehicle kept rolling. “But I’d dig my way down into the grave with her if it meant I didn’t have to live here any—”

  “Shut it!” Curtis barked. He’d had enough.

  Otto stared at him. He had the blue eyes and dark red hair of their mother, while Curtis’s brown eyes and hair favored their father, but no one could have looked at them and not known they were brothers.

  Curtis peered straight ahead, lips dry, heart smashing in his chest as he tried desperately to maneuver the vehicle through the storm. He’d driven out this way a dozen times, but with the dust and debris, visibility had dropped to maybe ten percent in the past fifteen minutes. Continuing on like this—nearly blind—was foolhardy at best, but if he’d gauged their progress correctly, they only had a short distance to cover before they reached shelter.

  It would be safer than trying to weather the storm inside the land crawler. They were still twenty miles out from Hadley’s Hope, with no chance of getting back to the colony until the grit-storm had blown over.

  “Curt—”

  “I’m not joking, Otto,” he told his brother, raising his voice to be heard over the screaming wind and the shushing roar of the dirt scouring the vehicle. “I’ll put you out right here.”

  “Are you telling me you don’t regret the day we set foot on Acheron?”

  Curtis twisted toward him.

  “Are you shitting me?” he said. “We wouldn’t even be here if not for you.”

  “Here we go again!” Draper groaned in the back seat. “Yousseff, please put a bullet in my head so I don’t have to listen to these two anymore.”

  Draper outranked her, but Yousseff didn’t seem to take this as an order. Curtis almost wished she had. The hugely muscled Draper had a long scar on the right side of his face, going up from the corner of his mouth as if someone had tried to extend his smile. On his throat he bore a tattoo of a scorpion, and somehow the combination of scar and tattoo made Curtis very nervous. Like a scorpion, Draper seemed as if he might strike at any moment, his humor a cover for inner volatility.

  Yet the same seemed true of Yousseff, who had no scars or tattoos. Her eyes were calm, and yet full of the promise of violence. Otto had once said that was just the mark of a soldier, but Curtis disagreed. He had known many other marines, and most of them hadn’t been the type to take imminent violence as a given.

  “Curtis…” Otto began warily.

  “No.” He didn’t want to hear it. Curtis and Otto—the older brother by two years—had been on Acheron for forty-seven months as surveyors and wildcat prospectors. Their time with the colony might be nothing compared to people like Meznick and Generazio, and Russ and Anne Jorden, but some people were just cut out for this kind of work, while others were not. Otto had been the one who talked Curtis into joining the colony, but within the past few months, he had been falling apart.

  Curtis understood, of course. All these years of terraforming had only partially tamed Acheron’s violent atmosphere. Always turbulent, the weather patterns kicked up massive storms strong enough to overturn vehicles, kicking up so much soil that it became impossible to see, and for instruments to navigate. The environment could be deadly, and the substandard equipment seemed constantly on the verge of lethal malfunction.

  As much as they liked the other colonists, the competition among the wildcatters—to find and stake claim on anything that would be valuable to the company—made it difficult to develop any real camaraderie.

  Otto had been defeated by the oppressive nature of the place. Trouble was, they couldn’t go home without earning enough money to pay for the journey, and for at least six months’ rent back on Earth.

  Curtis gripped the wheel even tighter and bent forward, slowing the vehicle. The gale raged around them, and for a few long seconds he could see nothing beyond the windshield. The lights from the crawler’s control panel cast the interior in a green glow, turning their faces ghostly pale, but outside all was black.

  He held his breath.

  The crawl
er shook.

  It rumbled through several dips in the landscape. He braked nearly to a stop, unwilling to risk the unknown. Then the wind lessened and he saw a familiar dark block silhouette in the storm ahead. Hitting the accelerator, he picked up speed.

  “I can’t do this,” Otto whined. “I can’t be here, Curt. It’s like the whole planet is trying to kill us!”

  Curtis took one hand off the wheel, turned, and punched his brother hard on the shoulder, as if they were small children again. Otto cried out, and clapped a hand to his arm.

  “What the hell?” he shouted.

  “Damn it, Finch!” Draper roared.

  Yousseff spoke the only two words she’d offered that day.

  “Stupid bastard.”

  Curtis looked forward again, grabbed the wheel tightly, and tried to turn—but too late to avoid the ditch. His heart sank as the left side of the crawler dipped and then dropped, and they scraped to a grinding halt, the right-hand tires spinning up dirt while the tires on the left spun at nothing but air.

  “Gun it!” Draper said angrily.

  “Won’t do any good,” Curtis told him, gunning it anyway. The crawler slewed a bit, the rear of the vehicle edging further over into the ditch.

  “Stop!” Otto said, staring at him. “The undercarriage is caught on a ridge. We slide any more, and we’ll roll right over.”

  Curtis took a slow breath, still clutching the wheel. The bedrock in the area consisted of stone flats and ridges buried in thick soil, with a top layer of dust and ash that shifted with the storms, so the visual details of the terrain changed considerably from day to day. Some of the ditches were as deep as twenty or thirty feet. If they rolled now, and managed to land right side up, he thought the crawler would be all right. They could make their way along the bottom of the ditch until they found a place where the grade wasn’t too steep to let them out.

  But if they landed upside down…

  “We’re bailing out,” he said, and he killed the engine.

  Yousseff swore.