Complex 13

THE SHIP

In a word, it was magnificent.

Even under a layer of 50-year-old frost, it was magnificent.

Its lines were streamlined and smooth; its outer shell was silver, armoured and hard. It had two downswept wings, one high tailfin and three mammoth rear thrusters.

Totally alien.

Totally cool.

It was largely intact, except for its great crushed nose—the result of a tremendous crash many years ago.

Filling the vast floor area all around the ship was a huge multi-holed alien structure, like a nest of some sort, or a three-dimensional spiderweb, dotted with thousands of foul slimy holes. This huge web fanned out from the ship and climbed the walls of the hangar. It too was covered in frost.

All was still.

‘There!’ Armstrong pointed at a small office, also raised off the floor, bolted to the wall at the very end of the catwalk far below them. ‘That must be the lab! Move!’

Down the staircase they raced.

As they ran, more of the man-sized dragons emerged from nests mounted on the walls of the hangar. They swooped in on the double-helix-like staircase—as the Marines descending the stairs returned automatic fire at them.

The dragons squealed, some fell, flapping and spasming.

One grabbed a Marine and hurled him off the stairs, sending him falling a hundred feet into the web-like formation on the floor of the hangar. The man landed in the web, which cushioned his fall, and he survived…

…for about two seconds.

Thwack! He was grabbed by a fiendishly strong claw that reached out from the nearest hole and yanked him out of sight, screaming. Then—

Crunch!

A foul blast of human blood came spraying out of the hole and the screaming stopped.

‘ Fucking hell…’ the Marine behind Armstrong breathed.

Armstrong paid him no heed. He hit the catwalk on the fly, just as one of the winged dargons landed on it right in front of him and bared its teeth.

Two booming shots from his Desert Eagle pistol removed the dragon’s head and it stumbled and staggered—headless—before falling off the catwalk, out of his way.

Behind him, another Marine fell.

They were three down, now.

Armstrong came to the lab, found the door locked from the inside.

Four booming gunshots fixed that. The door came free and he kicked it open and entered.