Alien: Covenant - Origins - The Official Movie Prequel

VIII

Five minutes earlier…

The bodyguards were well-trained, but it was late, they were tired, and there was no special reason for them to be unusually alert or on guard. As far as they knew, all they had to do was chat, keep an occasional eye on the lifts, and wait for their employers who were meeting in the boardroom. Readouts and audible alarms would alert them if any of the elevators came their way.

The lift indicators were as quiet as ever when the three black-clad intruders emerged from the compromised service elevator. Only one of the four armed escorts heard the parting of the silent doors on another part of the floor. As he looked around, he drew his pistol from its shoulder holster. At the first sign of motion as he started to shout a warning to his colleagues, he was hit in the throat by an airborne, electrically powered shuriken with a miniaturized integrated guidance system that sent it speeding unerringly toward its target.

Instantly alert, the other bodyguards managed to get off several shots. Most missed their intended targets. Two that hit home were deflected by the flexible body armor the intruders wore beneath their black outer clothing. The interlopers, however, favored more classic methods of dealing murder—powered throwing stars notwithstanding. Knives were much in evidence.

Like the intruders, the bodyguards wore undergarment armor of their own. That did not protect them from accurately wielded traditional weaponry that had been modified to contemporary standards. Racing toward the invaders, one guard took a throwing star to the forehead. Its ancient predecessor would have stuck firm, wounding the target.

Propelled by a tiny integrated motor and guidance system, the star cut through skin, flesh, bone, and brain to shoot out the back and bury itself in a far wall, its miniscule engine still sputtering. As a network of severed arteries spurted blood ceilingward from the crevasse that had appeared in the man’s head, he slowed to a stagger. His eyes were still open when he toppled over sideways.

More massive than his assailant, another of the bodyguards succeeded in grappling with one of the intruders. A powerful arm forced aside the attacker’s arm. Immediately the intruder let go of the knife he had been holding.

Guided by the sensory chip embedded in his left eye, the ceramic blade launched itself out of his hand and into the throat of the startled bodyguard. Stumbling backward and clutching at himself, the bigger man wrapped thick fingers around the self-powered weapon. As he struggled with both hands to pull it free, the tiny engine in the tang continued to push the point deeper. Blood from the pierced carotid artery flowed down the front of the guard’s previously immaculate jacket.

One by one the bodyguards were sent, broken and bleeding, to the floor. There followed the surreal spectacle of the board of Weyland-Yutani looking on with a varied mix of astonishment and horror as the intruders stepped over the four bodies they had rendered immobile and made their way toward the boardroom.

As the intruders came within sight of the boardroom and its occupants, Hideo Yutani feigned disinterest with the aplomb for which he was famous. As the rest of the board members stood and reacted with various degrees of alarm, even terror, the diminutive Takeshi ignored the proceedings entirely in favor of slowly and methodically draining his neighbor’s untouched bottle of Yamazuki 24.

“Keep calm, everyone,” Yutani said as the black-clad intruders approached the other side of the glass wall. The knives they wielded were menacing and bloody, which made it all the more difficult for him to remain calm. Nevertheless, he felt it his duty to do so.

“These bandits are on the other side of a wall of solid quartz glass,” he continued. “I see no sign of explosives, and the access code is changed every day, so they cannot have it.”

He exchanged a glance with Shiro. Lowering his comm unit, the young exec shook his head slowly. Yutani nodded back. The intruders would have been stupid indeed not to force their way in without first establishing some kind of communications block.

Turning back to the inner wall, he looked on as two of the intruders broke out matching laser drills. Several of the executives retreated further into the boardroom as one man began to melt a hole in the wall, while his companion started working on the door mechanism. A third was busy snapping together the components of what looked like an industrial-strength water pistol.

As soon as the first intruder had bored a hole in the wall, he stepped aside to allow access to the man wielding the pistol-like device. Poking the barrel through the hole, he fired.

Davies and his female colleague dove under the Hinoki table while several of their associates sought cover elsewhere. Yet no projectile emanated from the gun. Instead, the air in the room suddenly took on a faint smell, ironically, of cherry blossom.

The tabletop was no protection. Davies thought the scent quite pleasant before collapsing to the thickly carpeted floor. Already half unconscious from a steady draught of expensive whiskey, Takeshi passed out with his head on the table.

Everyone was unconscious by the time the second drill operator cut through the door and the three intruders entered. Behind them, a distant hum indicated that the main passenger lifts were in operation.

“Get a move on! They’re coming!” The speaker rushed down the hall toward the elevators. Utilizing his laser drill, he began welding first one set of lift doors shut, then the other. It wouldn’t permanently stop the security men from emerging, but it would slow them down. Others doubtless were making their cautious way up the fire stairs. Expecting to meet resistance, they would ascend slowly.

“Here!” While one of the intruders got his hands under the arms of the insensible Jenny Yutani and hoisted her up, his associate removed a small cylindrical atomizer from a belt pouch. Placing this beneath her nose, he pumped it twice. When she began to blink and cough, he quickly moved to gag her. The antidote was as powerful as the gas it counteracted. By the time they had her hands bound behind her back and her legs secured at the knees, she was fully conscious.

“She’s cursing us with her eyes,” the first intruder observed. “Be glad you can’t hear what she’s thinking.” Ignoring her muffled protestations, they half pushed, half dragged her out of the room. Seeing her cast an anxious look backward, the second intruder hastened to reassure her.

“Don’t look so concerned. They’ll all sleep for an hour and wake up with terrible headaches, but the gas isn’t fatal. Even your ignorant, uncaring father will be fine by sunrise.” As they headed toward the service lift she began to struggle with them, and he added more sharply, “Pay attention. It won’t do us any good if you fall, and it’ll do you less good. We’ll just carry you, and not gently.”

She glared at him but did as she was told, assuming that this was nothing more than an elaborate kidnapping. Her abductors would communicate with her father, a suitable ransom would be agreed upon and paid, many security personnel would be fired, and life would return to normal.

Her eyes widened as they passed the waiting area, and she saw the carnage that had occurred there. The bodyguards lay in unnatural positions, and where she could see a face, the eyes stared sightlessly. Blood from the individual bodies had merged to form a single large pool around the corpses.

Then her kidnappers started to push her into what at first glance appeared to be a dark and very empty elevator shaft. Before she could be shoved inside she tripped, letting out a muffled curse and nearly falling as the high heel of her right shoe broke off. A couple of seconds of pure fear were replaced by relief when she found herself standing on a flat, stable platform instead of falling more than a hundred floors to the service basement at the bottom of the shaft.

Two men flanked her, and a moment later they were joined by the last of their company.

“Did you blow the door to the emergency stairwell?” one of her captors asked the new arrival as the lift doors closed behind him. The third intruder nodded. Yutani wished she could see more of their faces than just their eyes, but the retro, pseudo-ninja gear kept them thoroughly anonymous.

“I left it cracked just enough.” The man gestured back the way he had come. “When they scan the floor for us, the first thing they’ll see is the open emergency exit. They’ll think we’re up on the roof somewhere, waiting for a chopper pickup.”

While she couldn’t see their faces, Yutani could hear their voices. Though just an initial assumption, she decided that only one of the kidnappers was Japanese. The others sounded thoroughly European. That was curious. At least it suggested that the Yakuza were not involved. Non-Japanese Yakuza recruits were as rare as a snow monkey in a private sauna.

The portable folding platform started to descend, the motor that powered it making virtually no noise. Behind her gag, Yutani realized that arriving security teams wouldn’t be able to hear it. They would assume—at least initially—that the heavily secured service shaft was not in use.

With no elegant, mirrored walls enclosing them and only the bare walls of the shaft on all sides, the kidnappers and their victim descended in silence. Thinking she heard security personnel on the other side of the wall, racing to the ninety-seventh floor even as their quarry was heading downward, she tried to scream, but her gag had been professionally applied. All she could make were subdued, muffled noises. Her abductors said nothing, but their expressions indicated they were well pleased.

Reaching the garage level two, they left the portable lift behind as they hustled her out of the shaft. She experienced a moment of hope when she saw the two men in service uniforms who appeared to be working on a conduit and control box. That hope vanished when one promptly gathered up his tools and headed around to the front of the service van, while his companion quickly opened the single back door of the vehicle and stepped aside.

She stumbled repeatedly as her abductors impelled her toward the open van, and managed to kick off her remaining shoe and its heel-less companion. Now barefoot, she offered no resistance as they hoisted her inside. The service tech who had entered first shut the door behind them. She heard his footsteps as he moved rapidly forward to join his associate in the front of the vehicle.

As they were laying her out on her back on the floor, the shift from an upright position caused her to start to choke. Crouching close in front of her, the intruder who had wielded one of the two drills met her gaze evenly.

“You won’t do either of us any good if you choke to death.” A hand reached toward her face. “I’m going to remove your gag. You raise your voice above conversation level and it goes right back in—choking or no choking. Understand?”

She nodded to indicate that she did. As he carefully removed the gag, she considered her options. At the moment, even the best of them was no better than notional. Very well, she decided. If she could not run, she could listen. Anything she learned might prove useful to the police later. That meant she had to keep them talking.

“Very professional,” she said quietly. “I would compliment you, but I would rather kill you. I saw what you did to our protectors. So you are all guilty of murder, as well as kidnapping.”

“Yutani threatens far more deaths than can be imagined,” declared one of the black-clad abductors. He was quickly shushed by another, who appeared to be in charge. That reaction itself, she felt, must be indicative of something significant. But what?

“There were bodies everywhere inside the meeting room.” She swallowed hard. “Are you telling the truth, when you say that my father and his subordinates are not dead?”

“I told you before, they’re only sleeping.” Rising slightly from where he was sitting, the leader peered out the front of the van between driver and assistant, then returned to kneel down beside her. “They will awaken with migraines, and hopefully some remorse.” He paused, added, “We would not have killed your bodyguards, had they not resisted.”

“You mean, had they not tried to do their jobs,” she shot back.

He remained unmoved. “Believe whatever you wish to believe. I will not debate peripherals with you.”

“How about ethics?” she tried. “Will you debate ethics with me? The ethics of murder and abduction?”

He looked down at her, and she was startled to see that he was on the verge of weeping. “You do not want to argue ethics with me, Ms. Yutani. Or with any of my associates. You will lose. Badly.”

As she mulled over the peculiar response she tried another tack. “My father will pay whatever ransom you demand. In whatever currency, credit, or electronic format you specify.”

“Will he now?” The three black-clad figures exchanged a look. For some reason, they seemed to find her amusing. “It remains to be seen.” The leader looked down at her once more. “We aren’t interested in money. What we want, and what we will communicate to your father and his board, is for—”

One of the other abductors gestured as if to cut the leader off, but he waved the objection away. “It doesn’t matter if she knows now or later.” He returned his attention to his captive. “What we want, what we demand, is that Weyland-Yutani cancel the Covenant mission.”

She was startled. “So you are not ordinary kidnappers. You are fanatics.” That, she knew, would make her captors harder to deal with. “Do you know what Weyland-Yutani has invested in the Covenant mission? Do you have any idea of the cost? Not just to the company, but to the hundreds of colonial families who have sold everything they own, and made their final goodbyes to every friend and relative on Earth? You seek to destroy their dreams!”

“Perhaps.” The response of the leader of the kidnappers was remarkably blasé. “But we will save them from their nightmares, as well, and everyone else along with them.”

It took her a couple of moments to try to parse that. She failed, shaking her head in confusion.

“You’re not making any sense—but then, being fanatics who aren’t behaving rationally, I suppose it would be too much to expect you to speak rationally. Unless,” she tried, “you’re working for the Jutou Combine.”

“The Jut…?” The leader paused in mid-reply. He glanced at his associates, and a moment later all three were chuckling softly. Yet again, it wasn’t a response she had expected. When the inappropriate bout of hilarity finally passed, he looked down at her again.

“Our ultimate purpose may or may not be made clear to you—that’s for others to decide. It’s enough for you and your father and the rest of Weyland-Yutani to understand that the Covenant mission must be scrapped. Not postponed. Cancelled. Permanently.”

Her mouth tightened. “That’s not going to happen. You could kill me, you could kill my father, you could slaughter the entire board of directors, but the Covenant will embark on its mission, and Origae-6 will be colonized. Mankind demands it!”

“Mankind is stupid.” The third abductor spoke with absolute conviction. Which was exactly what she would expect of a dedicated fanatic. Bits of a puzzle floated around in the back of her mind, then suddenly came together as if welded. Her eyes widened as she regarded her captors anew.

“The incident on board the ship. The would-be saboteur who blew himself out of an airlock. He was one of you!” When they declined to reply or meet her gaze she continued. “What just happened in London—the woman who attempted to sign on with the Covenant security detail, and the man who tried to kill the head of ship security, Sergeant Lopé. They were your employees, too.”

“Comrades.” The leader of the team of abductors corrected her quickly. “Good people. Dedicated people. One day statues will be erected in their honor and the memory of what they tried to do will be the subject of veneration from one side of the planet to the other.”

She took a risk with her response. “Failures are not venerated. Statues are not raised to madmen.”

Yet again the leader was not perturbed. “Yesterday’s madmen are today’s saints. Time and perspective are the lenses through which actions are evaluated. We’re not worried about how history perceives us. We are quite prepared to render judgment on ourselves.”

“You won’t have to.” She looked away, toward the front of the speeding service van. “The courts are going to do that for you.”

“They will have to catch us first,” the second kidnapper insisted. She was no longer sure which was which, and it didn’t really matter. She straightened as much as she could, listening intently.

“If I’m right, that should be soon.”

They heard the sirens a moment before the man in the front passenger seat looked back. His expression was grim.

“We have company.”

The leader of the abducting trio rose. Moving forward, he steadied himself with one hand each on the back of driver and passenger seat, while he studied the readouts on the front of the van’s surprisingly sophisticated console.

“How many?”

The passenger also examined the flourish of new information provided by the van’s rear-facing sensors and cameras.

“Two. Company security.” He paused. When he spoke again, his tone was somber. “Also two, maybe three city police cruisers with them. One chopper.” He looked back and up at the team leader. “Probably more of both on their way.”

“Kuso,” the other man replied tightly. “Any chance we can lose them?”

“Doubtful.” The driver spoke without looking back. “Too many on us already and as Ichiro says, more likely coming. You’ll have to ditch and be picked up later. And a suitable diversion will be necessary.” Across from him his associate was already punching information into a comm unit. “Our friends will have your location.”

“What about you?” By this time the leader had been joined by another of the black-clad kidnappers, peering over his shoulder and studying the multiple readouts. That left only one man next to Yutani.

The driver’s voice did not change. “We’ll buy you time enough to be safely picked up. We will do what is necessary.” A pause, then, “As all of us are prepared to do.”

The leader said nothing.

Yutani shattered the solemn silence by throwing herself forward and using her right shoulder to strike the nearest abductor squarely in the groin. As he went down and his two companions began to react, she spun, kicked against the floor, and threw herself backward against the rear door. Having identified the exit switch the moment she had been loaded inside, she shoved both bound hands hard against it. The single rear door obediently flew open. For just an instant her gaze locked onto that of the leader of the abductors, then she let herself tumble out the open back of the van.

His parting, shocked curse trailed away rapidly as she tucked her head as tightly as possible into her neck and upper chest. She brought her legs and arms in tight against her body, hit the pavement, bounced, and began to roll. One earring was torn off, then another, each costing many tens of thousands. Blood spurted from her earlobes, then began to spray in red droplets from the places where her clothing was ripped. There was a screaming in her ears, and she was blinded by headlights.

The sound faded quickly as the lead police cruiser screeched to a stop, skidding sideways as the frantic driver braked just in time to avoid running over her. She felt consciousness slipping away as she heard another officer yelling into his comm unit, calling for an airborne ambulance. Then hands were on her, rolling her onto her back. Though they were gentle, their touch on her road burn still made her want to cry out.

“She’s alive!” Looking back, the officer bending over her called out. Dimly, she could hear the sounds of other vehicles braking to a halt nearby. “Where’s that damn ambulance!”

Trained in general martial arts from an early age, one of the first things she had been taught was how to take a fall. That simple, undramatic bit of instruction might have just saved her life. She did not feel as if anything was broken. At least, she told herself weakly, nothing vital.

She was smiling when she passed out. Her abductors weren’t the only ones who could dedicate themselves to a cause.