Falling.
The exosuit crashing through the layers of resin that had covered the shaft. I could still hear the hum of the vast machines above me, built for unknown purpose by the pilots many millennia ago. I must have been unconscious for a brief moment before awakening to find myself in a chamber, the exosuit crumpled and damaged beyond repair by the fall. Alice had done her job well.
I had only my pistol and combat knife left as armaments. No signal from the radio or the motion tracker, but the staccato bark of a pulse rifle from the tunnel ahead told me where to go. That's where my team would be.
I was too late. I saw the alien queen dismember the last of them with a single flick of her tail. No time to think or consider a less rash course of action. I leapt down into the chamber and ran for the weapons that were left. A fully loaded mini gun and a rocket launcher would even the odds. The queen was as fast as me - perhaps faster - but her body would not turn as quickly as mine as I cut across her path and turned to face her. The barrels of the minigun span up to speed before spitting a stream of bullets in her face.
"Eat lead, bitch!"
The ammunition counter dwindled in a blur of numbers changing too rapidly to read. I spent the last of it on the queen's bodyguards, frantic in their efforts to protect their mistress. She seemed dazed and her raised her head in a howl of rage at the assault on her person.
Time to finish it.
I switched to my rocket launcher and activated the target acquisition screen. The reticule changed from green to yellow to red and the audible signal became a steady high pitched sound. I squeezed the trigger and the missile flew true to its target. I didn't wait to see the result, but reloaded and sent another missile to follow the first. The explosion ripped the queen in two, sending a spray of acid across the chamber, and opened a way out.
I ran past drones, seemingly too shocked by the death of their queen to react. I heard the familiar whine of the drop ship's engines and ran up a slope towards the light.
"Get the hell out of there Harrison!"
I reached the top of the ramp as the drop ship fought the wind shear and tried to lower its landing gear. I turned to see two of the queen's praetorian guards running up the ramp towards me. I grabbed for a WY-102 sniper rifle at my feet. No time to aim. No second chances. One shot finished each of them, the last falling no more than two meters from my feet in a spray of acid.
I jumped for the drop ship's ramp and safety.
Tomiko's voice came through on the radio, telling us not to try and save her from the Primary Operations Complex. I tried to argue, but the drop ship pilot cut across me, warning of a huge power spike coming from the reactors below, and she punched the ship into the stratosphere.
The face of the planet dissolved into a fiery hell.
No survivors, apart from the handful that made it back to the Verloc on the drop ship.
According to the Weyland-Yutani bioweapons division none of this took place. There was no captive alien breeding programme. There was no pilot technology on the site. There was no third species whose intervention on a matter of honour and revenge triggered this whole disaster.
It never happened.
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