“That’s great news,” she said toward the pickup. “Thanks, Tee. If we have to move from our present position, it won’t be far, and we’ll shoot you new landing coordinates. Meanwhile, look for my beacon. We’ll put out everything we’ve got to make sure you’ve got a straight vector in.”
“They can land on my head for all I care.” Cole looked around, scanning the expansive rooftop that remained deserted, except for him and his friends. “Anything they have to do to get us out of this place, it’s okay by me.”
The comm beeped, indicating that Tennessee wasn’t through.
“The storm’s still pretty bad so we’re going to shift back to a higher orbit while we prepare the cargo lift. But we’ll aim to drop at first light, your time. Coming through at six bells.”
“Aye aye,” Daniels acknowledged. “Six bells, understood. We’ll be packed and waiting.”
“Shouldn’t take long to haul y’all out of there,” Tennessee assured her. “Hey, is Faris around there? I’d like to say a quick hello to my lady.”
Walter and Daniels exchanged a glance. In Oram’s absence, informing Tennessee was her responsibility, and hers alone. She nodded at Walter, who turned and walked away. Lopé and Cole took this as a cue for them to do likewise.
As soon as she had been given some space, she once again addressed the comm.
“Hey, Tennessee,” she said, careful to keep her voice level, “can you switch to a private channel? Suit to suitset?”
On the Covenant’s bridge, neither Ricks nor Upworth could hear the ensuing conversation. They did not have to. Its import was writ clear in the succession of shifting expressions on Tennessee’s face.
The pilot didn’t look in their direction, and offered no details when he finally nodded to indicate that Ricks could terminate the exchange. He stood in silence for a long moment.
Then he ripped off his headset, flung it aside heedless of where it might land, and turned to exit the bridge. On his way out he slammed a fist into a bulkhead.
Married themselves, Upworth and Ricks had seen enough to understand.
It was very quiet in the subterranean chamber. Nothing moved save rising wisps of ammonia-laden mist.
Certainly David did not move. He was too busy watching the captain. Enough time had passed, so he was a bit concerned that nothing had happened. Then Oram’s rib cage arched in a slow, balletic spasm before increased respiration and heartbeat resumed.
Rising from where he had been sitting, the synthetic walked over to stand beside the man’s body. Nearby lay the facehugger. Having fulfilled its brief but frenzied mission in life, it was now a crumpled, harmless knot of bony appendages and limp, fleshy ovipositor. David ignored it, intent on the prone form of the captain.
Kneeling, he opened the man’s shirt and peered at his chest. The rib cage rippled slightly beneath sweaty, glistening skin. Everything was proceeding normally. Or rather, abnormally, he told himself. The normal abnormal. There was amusement to be found in the human language, if not in its racial precepts.
Another slow spasm caused Oram’s spine to arch unnaturally before settling down once again. It was then that he opened his eyes. Groggy from inactivity and lingering unconsciousness, he blinked at his surroundings before focusing, however imperfectly, on the figure of the synthetic looming over him.
“Easy now, Captain,” David murmured solicitously. “How do you feel?”
Oram tried to swallow only to find that he could not. There was an odd dryness in his throat. Even though he was breathing, he felt cut off from his lungs.
“I was dreaming,” he answered. “In the dream I met the Lord, our Creator. And he was so kind and forgiving, like when I was a kid.”
David pursed his lips and looked thoughtful.
“You don’t believe that anymore?”
Oram made an effort to shrug. One shoulder barely moved.
“I guess we all grow up.”
His eyes widened and his chest jerked violently. David took care to straighten and step back as the captain’s torso heaved. He was trying to say something, but no words came out. Instead, he ejected spittle and some blood.
A widening caldera appeared in the center of his chest, sending blood, bone, and viscera erupting into the ammonia-laden air. Given the human’s small size in relation to that of an Engineer, the birth was more explosive than David had expected. Blood splattered his clothing, his hands, his face. Save for wrinkling his nose curiously at the smell, he ignored all of it.
“I guess we do,” he murmured, more to himself than to the captain, who could no longer hear—or see, or sense anything.
The worm-like alien that emerged from the fresh, ripped corpse was likewise covered in gore. It was already beginning to change, to mature, even before it had fully emerged. An advanced model possessed of a wildly accelerated rate of growth, it rose slowly. An enthralled David looked on as it continued to straighten, unfolding itself to send out rapidly elongating arms, legs, and hammerhead-like skull as bits of the captain dripped or tumbled from its biomechanoid flanks.
As the chin came up, teeth like steel razors flashed in the dim light. Upright now, it contemplated the only other dynamic being in the chamber. The great smooth, eyeless head regarded the equally intent David, studying, smelling, sensing, taking the measure of that which like itself stood upright on two legs.
The head tilted to one side, the entire aspect of the hideous apparition suggesting unsuspected intelligence and contemplation.
Slowly, David spread his arms wide, trying to convey a mixture of supplication and friendship. Anyone else might have, should have, run. From the moment the captain had been infected, however, David had never had any intention of running.
By perceptual means the synthetic still could not divine, the alien watched him. Then, slowly, it copied his gesture, extending and raising both arms. David raised first one hand, then the other. Once again the alien copied the synthetic’s movements. Observing this, David grew emotional—or at least he mimicked growing emotional. It might have been honest sentiment. Or it might have been an effort to indicate, if only to himself, that he possessed depth.
A slight shudder passed through the creature whose emergence the synthetic continued to monitor. It grew visibly before David’s eyes. The exoskeleton grew longer and the tough epidermis stretched to accommodate the growth. It was developing right in front of the enthralled synthetic. He remained motionless, utterly rapt.
For a while he looked on in silence as it continued to increase in size. Then he deliberately moved in close. Craning forward, the now adolescent alien once again imitated the synthetic’s movement. Putting his lips together David whistled a few soft, carefully modulated notes. Head cocked to one side, the alien watched and listened. Then it exhaled softly, trying to duplicate the sounds. Since it possessed a very different respiratory mechanism, it failed in the attempt.
That did not matter to David. What was important and what prompted him to tears was the fact that the creature tried. The being that Oram had given birth to. The creature to which he, David, had been midwife. It responded. To him, and to him alone.
Holding his rifle at the ready, Cole worked his way down the deserted corridor, one of several that branched off from the great central chamber. He advanced carefully, ready to fire at anything that moved. Focusing on the task at hand kept his mind busy, kept him from feeling that the great stone heads in the main chamber were following his every move, judging him, and finding him and his companions wanting.