Predator - Incursion Read Free Page A

Liliya’s face. His eyes were wide, staring at her torso, and as she glanced down the pain signals hit her at last.
    She cried out, more in desperation than agony.
    It couldn’t end like this.
    It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair!
    Pressing a hand to her wound did nothing to prevent the white fluid from spewing across the floor.
    “Jesus Christ!” Dearing said.
    Liliya took advantage of his confusion. She dragged him aside with her free hand, exerting all her strength. He tripped over the body of his lover and sprawled on the floor, just as a shape filled the doorway.
    She didn’t look. She knew she didn’t have time, and if she was to survive she had to execute every movement, every moment, with complete efficiency. She stepped over the dead woman’s leg, pressed the panel on the wall, waited an agonizing eternity as the escape-pod hatch spiraled open, grasped at its edges and—
    Dearing screamed.
    She looked—she
had
to look—and saw the Xenomorph standing astride the fallen man, one limb piercing his shoulder, the other pressing down on the small of his back. It crouched low, curved head sloping down at its struggling prey, and as he screamed again its teeth lashed out and smashed his skull apart.
    Liliya hauled herself into the pod and slammed the execute button on the wall beside the door. The hatch slammed shut. Something struck the other side, hard, and then a roar shattered her hearing and became everything as the escape pod’s mooring bolts blasted loose and its propellant ignited.
    She should have been strapped into the single seat, protected against the immense acceleration. Smashed back against the closed hatch, Liliya let herself give in to the white-hot pain at last.
    As unconsciousness fell, she welcomed the release into blessed darkness.
    * * *
    Between blinks Liliya snapped awake and reality rushed in. A low whine issued from her, an uncomfortable moan with every breath. Pain brought her back. She was alone, and Roberts and Dearing were dead.
    “No,” she said.
    She had caused their deaths, even if she hadn’t pulled the trigger on Roberts or smashed Dearing’s skull apart with her own teeth.
    “No!” She shouted this time, voice deadened by the small pod’s soft interior, and she knew that she was right. There was nothing she could have done.
    Not if her mission was to survive.
    The escape pod shook for a few more seconds before its thrusters cut out. Weightless, Liliya shoved herself slightly away from the hatch and held onto the seat, swinging herself around, pulling herself down, fixing the strap around her waist and the restraint over her shoulders. Her blood misted the air and formed into droplets, milk-like bubbles that drifted in the disturbed atmosphere.
    Her stomach hurt, but what hurt more was the idea that it all might have been for nothing. Once secured in the seat she settled her frantic thoughts, running a calming program that leveled the peaks and troughs of her human personality. It was a process she disliked intensely—Liliya was over fifty years old, and thought of herself as human. Initiating support protocols pulled her out of that pleasant fantasy. Yet it was a necessary evil so that she could assess damage—both to herself and, more importantly, the information she had stolen.
    Launching internal diagnostics, she quickly focused attention on the area of her wound and the associated components. It took less than a second to reassure herself that her internal hard disc was undamaged. A fragment of bone had been blasted from Roberts’ ribs by the pulse rifle charge. It had entered her stomach and passed out through her side, missing vital internal systems and barely skimming the porcelain surround that protected her hard disc.
    Though breathing wasn’t essential, Liliya still gasped a sigh of relief.
    Everything was on there. Not only what Wordsworth had asked for, but everything for which the
Evelyn-Tew
had been designed. All that research. All those hours, days and