Compared to the sweltering humidity of the jungle planet the Falling Falcons just clawed their way free of, the room Aleric found himself in sat somewhere between frigid and too damn cold. The ‘cargo bay turned interrogation room’ aesthetics didn’t resonate strongly with him, but there was no accounting for taste. Weighed against the escape pod and, more importantly, the small hypersleep pod he’d crammed himself into, it was downright comfortable.
They hadn’t even handcuffed him to the table, which struck him as downright hospitable of them.
Prudence drove them to separate him from his weapons, but they’d taken neither the pilfered UPP bayonet sheathed in his boot nor the (also pilfered) automag he’d concealed at the small of his back, which either spoke to confidence or carelessness. He hadn’t decided which just yet.
After either a few minutes or an hour (the recent operation hadn’t done his sense of time any favors), a middle-aged man joined him at the table and poured them both a glass of water. Streaks of gray in otherwise dark brown hair, a neatly trimmed beard, burn scars along his left jaw and sharp features. Not a fresh fish, maybe even the ship’s captain. “Lieutenant Caldwell, is it?” The man glanced at his rank pins and then met his eyes with a smile that never quite reached his eyes.
“Second Lieutenant.” He briefly wondered if he should’ve tossed his rank pins, but if he hadn’t been an officer, they might have just shot him. “Call me Klepto. Still not used to being commissioned.” Aleric returned the guarded smile and took a drink. It took palpable effort to keep his composure; the burning in his throat revealed the clear liqiud to be something stronger than water. Likely just an effort to loosen his tongue, but he wasn’t going to complain about a free drink.
As much as anything could be free during an interrogation.
A guest, was he? “Very well, ‘Klepto’. Call me…Captain. I’m told you slipped not one, but two different hives of hyper-lethal aliens before you found your way here.”
“That’s correct.” Klepto paused, swirling the liquid in his glass and studying the Captain. “You think I’m full of shit.” He ventured.
“I think you should start at the beginning. I don’t suppose you have any footage of this?”
Klepto looked to the side, to the (presumably two-way) mirror on the side of the room. Slowly, he reached up to pull the white cap off his head, spilling free raven black hair. Gray-blue eyes stared back at him in the mirror; he needed to change the bandages on the left side of his head after this, if they afforded him the opportunity. He tossed the armored cap down on the table. “No helmet camera, I’m afraid.”
“So I see. Are you a company man, Klepto?” Captain looked down to the yellow logo emblazoned on the front of the hat, not quite able to hide his disdain.
“Hardly.” Aleric scoffed. “But their patrol caps are slightly more armored than ours. The former owner didn’t need it anymore.”
“I would think USCM Intelligence would spare no expense for their field operatives.”
“Then you clearly never worked in Intel.” Klepto scoffed. “And I don’t do helmets.” A slow exhale, half-sigh and half steadying himself. “Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Three Intel Officers walk into a backwater jungle planet…”
Lieutenant Caldwell didn’t have any intention of getting bogged down in the routine that preceded deployment. Perhaps some might find the process of shoving a reheated donk pocket into his mouth or weighing up how much gear he could justify carrying without slowing him down overmuch fascinating. Frankly, he’d lived the routine too many times to do anything but breeze through it, sprinkling in a few details here and there so he couldn’t be accused of neglecting information. One such detail caught the attention of his gracious host.
“Hang on. You were making wagers on which order your team would die in?”
“Hm?” It took a moment to snap out of his reverie and acknowledge the question. “Technically, only Ember put money down. But sure.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Normally, I’d wager in my favor, but…had a bad feeling about the op, this time.” He managed an unconvincing smile. “Hate it when I’m right.”
‘Captain’ shook his head. “Fucking jarheads. Continue.”
Klepto ejected the magazine from his M39 and tapped it against his arm, making sure the rounds were seated fully. The thing never jammed, but it was a ritual. An old one, from back when he carried a less reliable automatic and pointed it at very different enemies. All around him, armor-mounted lights flared to life; the dropship shined like a flashbang for a moment before his eyes adjusted. He pulled the black cloth wrapped around his neck up and over his mouth and nose. On the ship, he could be Second Lieutenant Aleric Caldwell. In the field, behind the mask, there was no room to be anything other than Klepto, the cutthroat sonnovabitch who’d clawed his way up from being a boot by outliving everyone around him.
…
One ear to the cold metal of the safe, one straining to listen for any movement out in the dark, out beyond the illumination cast by the light mounted on his armor. Distant gunfire, muzzle flashes and beams of light from other soldiers cutting through the colony. He’d cycled through damn near every combination before the lock opened with a satisfying -click-. He noted the winning numbers, resolved to check on them later. If they turned out to be the birthday of the local company man, he was going to be pissed. Inside: a diamond coin that went right into his pocket and a set of PMC fatigues. He took the armored cap, swept his own off his head and replaced it. He wasn’t sure it’d keep his head on his shoulders, but it might at least blunt a bullet or turn a claw. Even if company white-and-yellow weren’t his colors. “Better than nothing.”
“The first thing you did upon touching down was raid the Wey-Yu office for valuables.”
“We found some intel, too.” Klepto replied, more defensively than he’d intended. Captain didn’t look convinced. He shrugged and leaned back. “How do you think I got my name?”
…
Blood clung to his fingers, crimson and viscous and most certainly thicker than water. He wiped more from his temple before it could trickle into his eye, wiped his hand on his pants, and swept vials off the table and into his chest rig. Papers and folders went into the pouch at his side. Dark hair clung to his head from blood or sweat or both (damn this jungle and damn the oppressive humidity and damn opportunistic xenomorphs). Remove the bolts securing a vendor to the floor, lean into it shoulder-first to push it aside, sweep more items of interest into his bag. If he did this a few more times, he’d start dreaming of it, too.
Events blurred. He remembered a body in the colony’s fitness dome, clad in Intel green and flagged as a fellow officer by his HUD. The images blurred around the edge, almost dream-like in quality. Just him and a lone marine conscripted from nearby to retrieve the body (rank had its benefits). Every shadow held the xeno that claimed responsibility for the attack; he traded his weapon for his teammate and hoped that the marine was a good shot if trouble reared its head. He recognized ‘Snake’ as he finally took his eyes off the windows. The body went up over his shoulders.
The other intel officer’s head didn’t come with it.
“You know what the last thing I said to him was?” Klepto leaned in. His reflection, off to his side, wore a near-manic smile that he couldn’t wipe off his face. He hoped his eyes didn’t read quite as crazy. Someone might get jumpy and put a bullet in him.
“What?”
“You’re gonna live forever, Chen.”
“…oh.”
“And his last words to me?” His hand darted across the table, grabbing Captain’s wrist. The man tensed; his other hand fell out of sight, likely to the handle of whatever sidearm he wore. “You’re gonna get my stuff before this is over.” He released Captain’s arm and leaned back.
Deft hands stripped Lieutenant Chen’s webbing from his uniform, ran through his pouches for intel, ammo, and valuables. Klepto felt a little bad about the last bit, but they wouldn’t do Snake any good now. He was at least gentle when he eased his fellow officer’s unmoving form into a seat on the dropship; the ASO promised to get what remained of him to the morgue
“He was right and I was wrong. Ain’t it a bitch?”
“So Ember lost the wager. She didn’t die first.”
“Depends. Her heart stopped first, I hear. Clinical death. I wasn’t there for it, but they called it in.”
“And yet she persisted.”
“The miracles of modern medicine. With enough drugs pumping through your system, anything is possible.” He hesitated, looking away from his interrogator and the mirror on the wall both. “Almost anything.” Sinking back into the memories was almost a relief, at that point. Almost.
“Hydro’s FUBAR!” Bursts of pulse rifle fire underscored the point fittingly, echoing through the confines of the prefabricated structure and drifting in through the windows. It couldn’t have been longer than an hour or two since he’d touched dirt, but Klepto found himself already numb to the noises of the battlefield. The screams (of pain, of anger, the inhuman screeching of the xenomorphs), the whistle of mortar fire and the roar of dropship engines overhead. Heavy guns and missiles usually followed that last one, for all the good it did them.
“Whole operation’s FUBAR.” Kleto grumbled, quietly enough to be lost in the noise. He turned sideways to ease past the SADAR spec as their loader slid another rocket into place, stepped over a marine from Charlie without stopping to see if they still drew breath, and knelt next to his only remaining teammate, now that Snake had been shipped up to the morgue. He could still feel a pulse, but they looked to be made more of gauze and splints than flesh. He tried to haul them to their feet; they swayed unsteadily and collapsed back, eyes fluttering closed.
“Organs…fucked.” They managed. “Asshole…Lurker.” Ambush predators, even for 121s. Bastards, too. “You seen the fucker?” She asked quietly.
“Think it bloodied me earlier. Might be what got Chen, too.” He paused. “I’m not giving you a kidney.” Klepto looked around for a medic he could flag down and saw no one. First, he thought to track one down, but the gunfire and shouting was getting closer. It struck him as a good excuse to get the fuck out of dodge. “Fuck it. Up you go.” Another body over his shoulders; he couldn’t help but note the extra weight of one that still had their head and helmet attached. For a moment, he threatened to topple, blamed his bandaged head wound rather than the thought of the headless corpse of his teammate. He’d always been a good liar.
“Didn’t take you for a guardian fuckin’ angel. Two for two on dragging what’s left of your teammate to safety. Aren’t you just a regular boyscout?”
Nimble fingers ran across a keyboard, punching in a passkey and starting a data upload. As soon as he saw confirmation, he began rifling through the shelves in the storage room until he saw a bundle of diamonds, which he swept into his pack to join the pilfered coin.
…
A towering, blood-red xenomorph with claws like scythes leapt into the room, painting the walls red as it swept a trio of marines off their feet. Klepto nearly fell over himself to put distance between it and him, shoving past a terrified looking combat tech as he ran for it.
“Something like that, sure.” Klepto shifted in his seat. Morality (in action or discussion) had never been his strong point. “Where was I?”
A weak hand grabbed his wrist; he leaned close to hear the words of his comrade as they faded in and out of consciousness. “Thanks.”
“If you die second, you ruin my wager. And now you have to drag my ass out of trouble, next time.”
A half-hearted smile. “I’ll try.” The medic he’d dragged Ember to offered a look somewhere between annoyance and ‘I’ll stab you if you don’t fuck off’. Never let it be said Klepto couldn’t take a hint. Any delusions that the marines controlled the colony wouldn’t survive beyond the light of flares and weapon-mounted flashlights. In the darkness, the xenomorphs reigned supreme. Now was the time to hide behind walls and guns and barricades
“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. And thus the Intelligence Officer becomes a glorified rifleman.”
“Spare us the ‘warrior poet’ routine.” ‘Us’, not ‘me’. Not that there had ever been doubt others were listening in. “How’d you get off the colony?”
“Same way we got in. Thing is…somewhere along the way, someone–not me, mind you–got our research division xenomorph eggs. And…” For the first time, he hesitated, weighing how much he could really afford to divulge. Then again, how much could he afford not to divulge? “One person got off the colony alive. A scientist of some kind. They’d been…studying these things, and he must have talked our research division into picking up where they left off.”
“They set killer aliens loose on the colony and your research team decides that’s the kind of work they need to be doing on your ship?”
Klepto put his hands up between them, palms out, in a universal ‘don’t fucking blame me’ gesture. “I was busy trying to stay alive. Didn’t have a clue what research was up to.”
“Research is either going to save this operation or kill us all.” Klepto tapped his headset and shook his head. Bits and pieces of what they were up to trickled down through the command net, but he had bigger fish to fry. From the dense jungle vegetation, a diminutive alien leapt out, running past him and opening a gash in his leg before he brought his weapon to bear and put it down with a long burst of caseless rounds. “Bastard!” Warmth ran down his leg and pain spiked whenever he leaned too heavily to the right.
“Best hope they know what they’re doing up there.” Ember shook their head. Elsewhere, the fighting raged on, but neither Ember nor him were front-line fighters. Guarding the flanks against enterprising ambushers served the cause and kept them from getting themselves (or anyone else) killed. Klepto glanced at the ammo counter on his weapon and frowned. He hadn’t packed for sustained combat. Catching the glance, Ember pulled an extended magazine out of their pouch and tossed it his way; he caught it and slid it into place with an appreciative nod. “Sounds like east is losing ground.”
“Comms is in contact, too. Can’t be everywhere at once.” He knelt to carefully pick up a lit flare and hurl it into the darkness, squinting to catch any signs of movement. He still had his NODs, but they didn’t hold much of a charge; he wanted to save them for when it counted. That said, he did flick them on to sweep the darkness, bathed in green, before blinking back to normal vision. “Hey, I think that’s our friend.” He nodded in the direction of an unmoving lurker, acid still dripping from a dozen bullet holes. No way to prove it as the same one either of them encountered earlier, but they needed a victory.
“Good riddance. Shame we weren’t there for it.” Ember glanced at their watch. “Well, you were right. We’ve held for twenty minutes.” In truth, he’d been wary about betting against his fellow IO’s somewhat pessimistic fifteen minute estimate, but he had a good sense for the ebb and flow of battle, and it hadn’t felt that catastrophic. Yet. He took the credit stick she offered out.
“That makes me two for two. Let’s see if I’m right about dying second, too.”
…
The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Again. Planetside, with their backs against the landing pad, they’d been out of contact for…what, ten, fifteen minutes? Whenever it was that the xenomorphs overran the comms relay, their creeping black weeds and acid severing any ties with the personnel aboard the USS Almayer. Except their radio packs, which ought to still be working. In theory, they were. But no one on high answered.
The marine with the pack gave him an apologetic look. “I can’t raise anyone. Command, medical, engineering, nothing.”
“Keep trying.” Klepto tried (and failed) to keep the grim look off his face. Last any of them had heard, everyone shipside was arming up and moving to stamp out research’s failed attempt to create an allied hive of xenomorphs to launch against the ones planetside. Fresh out of cryo, the auxiliary support officer had been drafted to grab a gun and join the posse. Nominally, they were in charge of Intel, among other divisions. In practice, it seemed that they were on their own down here.
“So, your research team decided to breed more xenomorphs in the hopes of fighting fire with fire, and lost control of them.”
“Yeah. I think I’ve seen that movie before. Several times. Three guesses how it always ends.” In the wake of a disaster like that, it proved exceedingly difficult to draw any mirth from being right.
“Whatever’s left of the groundside complement evacuates, then. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
“Eventually. The ordnance tech did well in sending down party favors. We kept the wolves at bay for a while. Longer than I expected, for sure. More to the point, the damned pilot wouldn’t evacuate. Last orders he had from command said hold. Wanted whoever was in charge to chime in.”
“You wanted to leave?”
“Ember and I had one foot out the door for the last hour. Nothing we did planetside mattered if we lost our only lifeline. But no word came, and so we held until we couldn’t anymore. Then…”
“No one is responding on any channel. Assume we’re going to get a warm welcome shipside!” Klepto looked around and saw haggard faces, bandaged wounds. None of the bravado present on their first deployment survived this long. Neither had most of the soldiers they’d left the ship with. At best, grim determination made itself known as the marines in transit checked magazines, pumped medical drugs into their systems, and steeled themselves for another fight. Medics worked frantically to get everyone back on their feet. No respite for the weary, and no rest for the wicked.
“You didn’t make contact when you first landed?” Captain seemed surprised. No more so than Klepto had been when the dropship landed in the hangar. “Luck of the devil.”
“Only thing that kept us alive, I think. We walked, or stumbled, or crawled into medical. Watched the vents, and the stairs, and counted the minutes.”
“Who was in charge, at that point?”
“I don’t think anyone knew. Ember and I, maybe? Command was gone. Medical was gone. There was a Staff Officer down there with us, in the uh ARC, but I lost track of them. We still had our synthetic. They managed to enable evacuation protocols. Eventually.”
“You gave up the ghost? Just like that?” Across the table, the Captain looked torn between scorn and amusement. “I would have thought you’d try to clear the ship first.”
“This…‘bravo hive’ had all the time in the world to dig in. They had the entire ship crew to breed more numbers.” Aleric couldn’t muster any anger or indignation. Memories of the cluster of half-dead survivors, gathered together in the medical bay, only made him feel profoundly sad. And more than a little guilty. “At any rate, they came to us first.”
The deafening screech of a Xenomorph Queen echoed through the hangar, shattering Klepto’s equilibrium and threatening to push him off his feet. He took a knee, extending the stock on his SMG and sighting in on the medbay. The first attack from the shipside aliens dislodged them from medical. Second Lieutenant Aleric Caldwell knew a lost cause when he saw one. Hell, he looked at one in the mirror every time they shook him from hypersleep.
The corridor adjoining medical looked sickly, bathed in the green light from his NODs, but revealed no movement. He dashed across it, ducked into the ship’s gym. One hand held the grip of his holstered SMG, ready to draw at a moment’s notice; the other held a prybar, which he used to force open the door into the maintenance tunnels behind the gym. He pulled it shut behind him; it might at least slow down any pursuers. Only faint light from half-dead bulbs illuminated these cramped passages, but they still had enough power that he didn’t need to force the doors. Small mercies.
Near the shuttle dock, he encountered a motley team of three marines from different squads, advancing in the opposite direction. Three rifle barrels turned his way when he opened the door, they dropped as soon as he could be seen to be human, thankfully before anyone squeezed a panicked shot off.
“Medical’s lost.” Warning them felt like common courtesy. He offered them nothing else before brushing past them and disappearing further into the tunnels. Grouping up now could only slow him down and draw attention; Klepto moved quicker and quieter on his own. Worming through the ship’s arteries, he kept his weapon ready until they spit him out near engineering. Up the ladder, he found himself face-to-face with a yellow-tinged alien, sprawled out on the floor. He didn’t bother to shoulder his SMG; he drew and fired, dumping half a magazine wildly at it. Just as surprised, it scrambled to flee the hail of weapons-fire. An alpha marine staggered into his firing line from the ladder he’d just come up and caught a bullet in the hand for his trouble.
“You got the drop on one of the little bastards and it still got away?”
“I wasn’t going to risk it leading me to its friends. It could go lick its wounds, I wanted out.” After a moment’s hesitation, Klepto opted to editorialize the remainder of the story. Just slightly. No need to mention abandoning the marine to flee to an escape pod, or sealing himself inside rather than wait for any others. He had tried to offer medical assitance. He’d tried to wait for anyone else to come along. When you heard movement out in the corridor, you didn’t stake your life on what would be on the other side when you opened the door unless you were damned sure.
“So, you manage to slip the noose not once, but twice. You Intel bunch really are slippery bastards.”
Klepto slumped back in his chair and managed one last shrug, a weak smile. “Never been the best shot, or the toughest. I’m just hard to kill. Did you…did you pick up any other pods?” He hadn’t heard from Ember since he abandoned medbay. Realistically, he wouldn’t see them again.
“Just yours. We’re not collecting strays. You broadcast the right codes. If you hadn’t, we would’ve thrown a grenade in your pod, stripped your body and dumped you into space.”
“Lucky me. So now what?”
“Well, it occurs that we’re the closest ship to the USS Almayer, and you’ve just informed me that the entire marine complement is either dead or on the run.” The Captain reached up to scratch his chin, donning a wicked grin as he did so. “That’s a lot of gear the Front could really use. And you know the ship.”
“It’s not much use if you’re dead. Or if I get shot for treason.”
“We could shoot you now, if you’d prefer. Hate to waste an asset, but…”
Klepto held both his hands up in an effort to pacify the CLF cell leader sitting opposite him. “BUT the USCM could hardly fault me leading a contingent of Freelancers I encountered to look for survivors.” The last thing he wanted was to go back to the Almayer, but the Captain sitting opposite him struck him as the type to make good on his threats. He’d gone through too much to get out; he didn’t intend to die now.
“Maybe you’ll even get a medal. My men will show you to the armory. Take what you need. I imagine you’ll need it.”
“I imagine I will.” Klepto pushed back his chair and stood, weighing up the risks of going for the automag he carried. He didn’t like his odds of shooting his way out. Better, perhaps, to steal whatever shuttle they took over to the Almayer. Time to hope his luck didn’t run out too soon. “Lead on.”
((Author’s Note: For the curious, this is based pretty faithfully on a round that did occur, and struck me as noteworthy enough to write up something for. I wanted to try something new with the framing device of an interrogation, and it gave me a handy way to truncate events.
If anyone wants to see more, check out Cold Call, a separate-continuity Klepto adventure in which his team is sent ahead of the marine force to investigate reports of a company man up to no good. It will be receiving a sequel in the near-future.))