2020-05-22 - Xenophobia: Planetfall

August is...younger. He knows that immediately, because ten or so years ago he felt a lot different in his own body. Heavier through the face and chest, less white and gray.

A combat specialist--an engineer, maybe. Well, some things don't change. But now instead of three years, it's been...a lot more than that. He can feel it. He knows it. He has an alternate self, in a manner of speaking. Which might mean--

He starts, first at Itzhak's voice, then at the loudspeaker. Drop. He starts looking around. Are they parachuting in somewhere? It's only been two decades since his last jump, he should be fine. Totally fine.

He tries to get a look at their surroundings, his gear, anything he can. "Sit tight," he assures Itzhak, tries to internally reassure himself about how Itzhak isn't in anything remotely resembling body armor.

De la Vega, on the other hand, was never a big man, never a massive slab of meat like some of his brethren. Sturdily built like a hunting cat, all corded muscle and dark, liquid grace. He looks to be in his mid thirties at best guess, and in peak physical form under the snug-fitting black USMC BDUs. There's a large rifle slung across his back that might be recognisable as an M42C, fitted with an electronic scope, as well as several analog reticles slotted into various pockets of his gear.

The Dream finds him standing on the ramp leading into the craft being loaded up with gear, and moreover it appears he's leading this operation. A role he hasn't played in a couple of decades, and appears thoroughly unprepared for. He cuts a look between the jarhead with a crate of ammunition, letting him know it's the last one, and Itzhak over there. Itzhak Rosencrantz, without a gun. Without armour. And his jaw hardens.

"Hey," he grunts at the Marine about to push past him. "Let me have one more look at the mission plan. I'd like to check the drop coordinates against our intel one more time."

So there's Joe as only Ruiz might remember him, though Itz has seen pictures. That cut-glass profile, sans its smile lines, the blue eyes hidden behind matte gray shades. The blond hair buzzed down to a pelt short enough to show the gleam of pale scalp beneath. He's in a crisp flightsuit, helmet under his arm.

He fits in here, perfectly, with only the distinctness of his features to prove that he's not just another figure in the Dream. At ease as a cat on a hearth, posture and carriage all lazy arrogance, as the long jaw works on what's presumably a piece of gum. He cranes his head to inspect the coordinates.

Itzhak isn't wearing body armor. He's wearing the kind of clothes someone might wear on a backcountry hike: boots, tough pants, a long sleeved athletic shirt and a vest that's like a fisherman's vest. Many pockets. Doesn't seem to be armed, but probably that's for the best, as he's notoriously clueless about handling firearms.

He looks at August like he doesn't recognize him. Because he doesn't. But when August speaks, he blinks. "Roen?" The voice, the body language, suddenly it snaps together for him. "Jesus," he says in disgust. "You're even hotter. How is that fair?" Himself, he looks exactly like he always does: tall, lanky, beaky, and with a very unmilitary mane of curls. He's the same age, too, a few years shy of forty, with the same hard-worn face.

Not only Roen, but Cavanaugh and most of all de la Vega are younger than him and in peak condition. Itzhak doesn't know what face to make, although he totally checks Ruiz out. "This is so fucking weird," he mutters.

The Marine seems to be nothing more than a dream construction, the kind of figure a brain randomly puts together. Ruiz might be reminded of a man he served with who died under fire, but anything more than that is lost in translation. But the figure says, "Yes sir," presents him with a tablet and goes over the numbers with him.

The planet is named 51 Pegasi b, a largely wild world part of which is being used for agriculture. Raising meat, primarily. Mostly operated by robots, it's got only a handful of people. The person in charge of the farm is who they're going in to extract...from what?

From what is a suspected xenomorph infestation. The planet's lost contact with the rest of space, but there's certain signs that the military now knows to look for. Those signs are all in evidence.

Itzhak's looking at his tablet, too, scrolling through pages and not looking too happy. "Says I'm a, uhhhh, a 'xenobiologist', on loan from ..." He sees the name. He goes silent. Then, quietly, "Weyland-Yutani. Welp. This is gonna suck."

The loudspeaker comes on again. "Two minutes to drop." People (or "people") hustle to finish what they're doing, get into the dropship.

August looks down at himself when Itzhak seems confused as to who he is. He's in BDUs which match Ruiz's, but unlike Ruiz, he's also sporting a hell of a lot of what could only be called paraphernalia. All manner of gadgets: lights, radios, a smaller version of the tablet Itzhak has (though this one looks like it could probably survive a tank rolling over it), a rather beefy firearm at his back, and the world's most ridiculous Swiss Army Knife like contraption. Combat engineer for sure.

He catches the last bit, glances up and gives Itzhak a Look. "Shoulda seen me in my twenties," he says, flashing his teeth, and moves towards Ruiz. He squints at Cavanaugh, shakes his head. "Okay. This is going to take some getting used to." He eyes the information Ruiz is given. "Xenomorph. Like..." He mimes a grasping claw--or a chomping face--coming out of his mouth with one hand.

This isn't the time to be getting distracted with thoughts of how he looks younger. How Cavanaugh looks younger (and blonder). And Roen, too, and Itzhak's.. a xenobiologist? De la Vega's brows furrow slightly at the improbability of all of it, and he shoves it aside as the tablet is shown to him. "Don't you fucking sir me," he's quick to point out, in a low growl. And brilliant he may not be, but the man has a facility for retaining and recalling facts. Data. Which he's filing away as it's presented to him, already adjusting the plan of attack in his head and calculating their odds of coming out of this alive.

While the faceless Marine talks, Javier's eyes are on Itzhak. Then August, when the taller man approaches. "I'm guessing you've got the specs for this farm on your, uh." He nods toward the tablet August is carrying. "We'll need to know the locations of generators, security systems, secret fucking underground tunnels." Another sweep of his eyes across Rosencrantz before he ducks his head and climbs into the ship proper. And takes a breath before addressing Cavanaugh, without quite meeting his eyes, "We good to close this up and go, sir?" They've served together before, sure. But not like this.

Joe's lazily impassive, beyond his default cool into something like phlegmatic. He doesn't show any signs of recognizing the others or having any particular emotional reaction to the news that what they're up against will be xenomorphs. No loft of his brows above the upper rims of those dull gray lenses, opaque to his onlookers. No fanboy commentary, either for or against. A moment where he stops chewing his cud, or whatever it is he's doing, and says, laconically, "Yep. Good to go." He's nominally the ranker here, but de la Vega's in charge, and there's no bristling about that, either.

Suiting the action to the word, he's already turning to head for the cockpit, and settles in there with every evidence of comfort. Nevermind that he was a fighter jock in that distant real life, not a transport pilot.

Itzhak, tall skinny guy that he is, looks intensely vulnerable among all the brisk, armored, and armed Marines. Someone pauses to shove a flak vest at him, orders him to put it on if he knows what's good for him. Itzhak doesn't argue, just struggles into the thing, messes with the heavy plastic clasps. "Yeah," he says to August without looking at him. "Like that." When he does look up, it's at Ruiz, to find Ruiz looking at him, and he just looks back. It's not fear on his face. It's a hardening determination.

Why doesn't Cavanaugh act like he knows any of them, or knows that this is a Dream? Itzhak eyes him, worriedly. "Cavanaugh? Joe?"

The dream Marine says to Ruiz, "I forgot, your parents are married," in a very sassy tone. Other Marines pile up the ramp, settle into the seats, pull down the U harnesses.

One of them points Itzhak up the ramp, like, what are you waiting for, and he snaps, "I ain't goin' without them," jerking his head at Ruiz and August.

"One minute to drop."

"Yeah, probably..." August pulls out the handheld, swipes around at it. Thank God, no lock screen. "Looks like...yeah. Though," he cuts a look at Ruiz, "there's definitely some redacted sections." His tone is dry and flat in the manner of someone too used to not being told everything he needs to know, a shared regret among many rank and file in wartimes with questionable circumstances.

He pockets the handheld, laughs at the other Marine's response to Ruiz. Turning to head inside, he adds, "I'm not 'sir'ing a single one of you, we'll just that out of the way right now," over his shoulder. He waves Itzhak into the ship. "Come on, let's get you strapped in."

This much, at least, is familiar. Strap in until it's time to jump out. Well, assuming they are jumping out. They might just be walking out. But he figures it's better to emotionally prepare for the inevitable.

Like the part where he's still dim. That's going to be a problem.

The dream Marine gets a quick little baring of teeth from de la Vega that's probably missed entirely, and then he's on the move. Up the ramp in two quick, powerful strides; his voice is raised to be heard above the din of engines spooling and hydraulics humming. "I need asses on seats right fucking now, let's MOVE." That sandpapery, smoke-roughened rasp still isn't all that well-suited to yelling, but he makes do with what he's got, and gets himself harnessed in once he's certain his xenobiologist is secured.

Of Cavanaugh and his lack of recognition, well. One problem at a time. He himself seems disinclined to trouble himself with it, for the time being.

"We play it where it lies, Rosencrantz. Now get the fuck up that ramp and strap in, the bus is leaving," There's no ire or impatience in the pilot's tone. They're here. It's going to get bad....and he's still dim, too. He hasn't found the purpose he needs, or done thing in the order that's needed, it seems, to unlock it all again.

The panel before him is somehow familiar. A Tomcat's boards transposed to another key; things are where they need to be, he knows what he needs to know. Somehow unrusty, a gift of the Dream. "'least this motherfucker isn't an orbiter," he says, under his breath. "We'd be fucked like a Thai hooker when the Fleet hits port if it were."

Then he's rattling off the litany - controls functioning, surfaces responding. A dream within the Dream, maybe.

Itzhak shivers once, mouth twisting downwards. "You better not," he says to August, trying for a joke, "that would just be weird." Then he's loading up, slinging his lanky ass in a seat, letting Ruiz secure him. He catches his wrist, shoots him a fierce but unreadable glance, lets him go.

"D'you really think it's bugs?" someone is asking Itzhak.

"Yeah," he says, tone sharp, squirming to settle under the U harness. "I really do."

"Pssht," says another Marine, undifferentiated like all the rest. "Probably some fuckin' yokel forgot to charge the transmitter."

Itzhak glances at him (or her, or it), eyes sharp as his tone. "Wouldn't that be nice." This seems to cheer or at least excite the dream figures.

"We're gonna light 'em up!"

"FUCKIN' GET SOME, MARINES!"

The dropship ramp closes. The engines spin up under Joe's touch, not jets or rockets, but something more powerful and more strange. He can tell that this might be a transport ship, but it's also well-equipped to defend itself. Maybe not so much with the high-G dogfighting, though. This ship is a generalist, not a specialist.

Warning lights flash yellow. A harsh alarm goes off--BRRRNT! BRRRNT! BRRRNT!. Underneath the dropship, the enormous bay doors slide open.

Outside is nothing but vacuum. In the distance, the planet, resting at three-quarters full on a bed of velvet and stars.

The clamps that hold the dropship blow open on Joe's mark. Gravity lurches, turns upside down, mashes bodies up against the harnesses. Now they're in freefall, plummeting towards atmosphere.

August is swiping through his handheld to pass the last few seconds. "If we're lucky, they'll thank us for patching their radio with some fresh beef. T-bone and ribeye for all." He stuffs the little phone-like gadget into a side pocket when the yellow light flashes.

Okay, this isn't the same as dropping in the way August has done it. Hell, he never even had to do a HALO drop. Night, sure. HALO? No. And definitely not 'a space ship descending from space'.

But some aspects are familiar; the lurch of the ship as it's shoved out of the larger vessel; the tension of holding on to the harnasses and trying to not be nervous about what's waiting for them. In fact that last bit is a little too familiar. When he steps off this plane--ship--what's he going to feel?

He focuses on Itzhak and Ruiz by turns instead. They're not landing in a city under siege, but on a farm. Well, a farming planet, anyways. It's going to be fine.

Ruiz's wrist is caught, dark eyes locked onto Itzhak's lighter hazels for just a moment. A moment's all they've got, and then he's pulling away, and harnessing himself in. Moments later, the ship shudders to life and that terrible, weightless sensation begins to sink in as they initiate the drop. And unlike August, he has done a HALO and even a LALO drop or two, but he's never been rated on fucking space elevators; his head sinks back against the bulkhead, his eyes close, and his teeth sit together as breath's forced steadily through his nose. Not fear; focus. If they're going to get through this alive, he's going to need to focus.

"Llévanos con calma ahora, Cavanaugh," he murmurs, likely inaudible over the thump and clatter and bang of the ship's innards as g-forces start to exert increasing stress on them. "Calma, ahora."

God, this is a relief in the weirdest possible way. It's been years since he was in a cockpit. Years since he saw the surface of a planet scrolling beneath him, and had nothing more to think about than the machine and the atmosphere. Like a weight lifting. Like wings unfurling, exultant.

Easy? That's debatable. But smooth, yes. He knows the angle they need to neither skip off atmosphere like a stone off a pond nor come in at the kind of ballistic angle that makes anyone black out. This time he's the one driving, not Rostov, no longer a passive passenger crammed into the padded shell of a Soyuz. The memories that threaten to rise up and choke are mercilessly crammed back down.

The ship shudders and shakes upon atmosphere entry. (Can't call it re-entry, not this one.) The feel of hitting air is like the ship thumped into a pile of oatmeal.

Below is a beautiful Earthlike planet, never colonized because REDACTED. Most of it remains wild, but the area Joe needs to aim for is tamed, about the square footage of the western United States. There's no spaceport, the need for off-planet travel is so little, but the beacon pings to show the way to the populated area. Not very populated, less than a hundred people on-planet, and the people who choose to live this way have their reasons.

No transmissions come from the planet. Nobody hails them or gives permission to land.

As they come in low, the monitors show that the place they're landing is rolling and flat, covered in hip-high grasses of great diversity. Even from so high, the herds are visible, and as the ship drops lower and lower, individual animals can be seen. Absolutely huge animals, dark brown and wooly, with massive heads, roam the prairie in such numbers they darken the land.

These aren't cattle. They're bison.

The dropship touches down near a cluster of buildings. It's an easy landing, for the thing can just plop itself down without a need for a runway. On the monitors, the buildings are still and silent, storm shutters rolled over all the windows.

August weathers the ride as a man who's had rougher, and once they're over the planet proper, he can only stare. Earth hasn't looked this wild and untames in centuries, and God if it isn't a sight to see.

And what are those?

"Ah. Right." Of course the Company would want to maximize output for input. "So, beefalo burgers and tongue," he says, amending his previously proposed thank you meal.

He breathes in the smell of it as the ship lands, and since this is a Dream--it has to be, right?--he feels around them, sensing the plants around him, as far as he can go.

No transmissions, no welcoming hails, but de la Vega's unhooking his harness the moment the chop's settled, and keying the shipboard radio to monitor traffic while Joe drives the bus. While he's got half an eye on that, he does a quick scan of the armaments as well, gloved fingers skimming over the controls for the pulse cannons and ASAT missile systems, then a brief squint at the trapdoor that unlocks to pull out the railgun mount.

And then, of course, they're landing, and he drags his focus away from the guns and back to their mission as the bay doors start to open. Rifle shouldered, he barks at his faceless men to offload, locks eyes again with Rosencrantz. Like, I've got your six, and hitches his chin to Roen to take point.

The bus driver in question apparently intends to sit tight.....and however hard he's trying to stay in character, he's movie savvy enough that the 'ship's weapons are cycled up. Let the faceless little jarheads chuckle amongst themselves about jumpy flyboys, he doesn't care. Xenomorphs are not anything to fuck with.

"Y'all shut and lock the door behind you," he admonishes them. "I'mma be sittin' here with my foot on the gas. Make this quick." The accent's deeper, slower than usual - reminiscent of older days.

Itzhak unstraps and rises to his feet as the Marines surge past on Ruiz's order. The instincts that served him in prison and on the street have no use whatsoever here, and he knows it, can feel it in his bones where his glimmer lives. He glances to meet Ruiz's eyes, and swallows, his lips pressed into a thin line.

The ramp drops, and it's a lovely late spring day out there. The buildings show signs of a firefight. Concrete paths are cracked. The earth is churned up as if freshly plowed.

August's attention is on some corner of the ship, staring while around him the Dream marines get out and go about their orderly business per Ruiz's orders. Is his Dream self like this, he wonders? Do they expect it of him?

Here are some beefalo, grazing away at the lush plantlife this planet sustains. God, to live in a place like this. Nothing but the wilderness. There's the buildings, brittle structures easily manipulated by the shaping if he needed to.

And beneath them--wait. Beneath them?

Shit.

"They're right under us, don't get out of the ship!" Of course, he's still unstrapping himself, because everyone else has, and he needs to be ready to--well, probably rip apart some xenos.

They're right- "Beneath us?" He doesn't really need Roen to repeat himself; he trusts the man, and when August says not to leave the ship, he listens. The Marines' orders are changed up on the fly with a rough-voiced bark, and de la Vega's own sidearm brought to bear. His scoped rifle's no use in such close quarters. With the engines still spooled, he cuts Cavanaugh a brief glance and asks, "Think you can get us airborne for a few potshots at these fuckers, sir?" Yes. Sir. He makes a point of saying it, too.

"It's like you don't even know me, Marine," retorts Cavanaugh, still in that imperturbable voice. Flashbacks to Bahrain. Well, at least it sounds like he's swallowed his gum. "Get your folks back on board, I'mma clean this place up some. Locals just gonna have to deal. 's on me."

Ruiz may be in charge, but he's taking responsibility, should they prove to have abandoned infected civilians or something like.

The order to get the fuck back on the ship has Marines scrambling, but--

the ground erupts and glossy black things are rearing up, tearing their way out of the soil, seizing faceless Marines. The ground gives way under the dropship, its landing gear sinks amidt boiling black exoskeletons. Joe maintains control of the ship.

The gunfire as the Marines defend themselves is real enough. Their shouts, and then their screams, are real enough.

"BUGS!"

"Back to the dropship! MOVE IT!"

"Oh Jesus it's got me!"

Pulse rifles chatter. But these xenos are huge, massy with enormous heads and humped backs, their skull casques split into two hollow prongs. They don't look like the footage of other infestations at all.

And some of them are latching onto the dropship, making it slew, pulling it down like wolves.

August grabs a handhold and braces himself as the ship yaws, teeth set. He's staring out the back of the ship at the Dream marines being turns apart by...ugh. Beefalo xenos.

They're Dream manifestations, they're not real they should just leave them and flee for their lives. Logical, practical, even reasonable. But he's really bad at that kind of thing.

He's not firing from inside the ship; but he has other weapons. Better ones, arguably; he uses those. One in particular, which will work great on things not people.

Who the hell died and put a twice-demoted Gunnery Sergeant in charge of this mission, anyway? Someone was on some serious mind-altering chemicals when that decision was made.

The shudder of gunfire, the shout that goes up from de la Vega's men when their ingress is thwarted, it sends a sharp chill crawling down his spine. He hears the first one go down, drown in his own blood. He hears another begging for his life at the last instant; a man whose bravery he knows, even if he's never met him before in his life. Another name inked into his skin, another comrade, another friend. Snarling, infuriated at the situation or at himself or at Joe's it's like you don't even know me, marine, he whips around and starts laying down covering fire with his sidearm as the Marines pour back into the dropship.

Marines may re-embark. Buffamorphs, no. Fuck that. He just got this ship cleaned up from the last mission, and the worst thing that happened there was a bunch of spacesick Marines. There's the whine and clatter of the ship's guns spooling up and then spraying rounds. A more merciful death for anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in that fire than being made a host for an infant xenalo, surely. "Lifting off," he tells them, unecessarily. Assuming he can.

August reaches out with glimmer, not firepower, and opens up wounds, cracking exoskeletons. Screeeee! The alien beings scream, though it's hard to say it's pain or fury or what. Maybe they don't feel pain and it's simply an alarm.

Joe turns the guns, fires, and tears apart more of them. A lot of acid blood hisses on the ground, steaming as it eats through whatever bio matter is there.

Ruiz shoots cover fire with his hand cannon, bullets *pok*ing and cracking those weird split casques. Faceless, genderless Marines rush past, jumping for the moving ramp, and making it.

Itzhak, one hand latched on something sturdy while the ship tosses and shakes, finds this a great time to...sing, apparently. "Go and tell that long-tongued liar," he mutters, through clenched teeth. "Go and tell that midnight rider, the rambler, the gambler, the back-biter..."

The earth shakes, roaring. It flings xenomorphs down, gapes under them, closes around them. Itzhak's glimmer glows like a searchlight, blinding, as an earthquake of his making shakes the battle apart. The dropship lifts free, but it's not in great shape, the engines whining. They've been splashed with acid.

August sags against the fuselage, panting with effort. It's never been that hard to use his Art before. In some ways, it's easier; he can ignore the pain and death of the faceless Marines, because he doesn't have the Glimmer bandwidth to focus on them and kill the xenomorphs at the same time.

But then they're lifting off, and the ship sounds like it's falling apart. He gets to checking on the Marines who made it on board, to see if he can heal any of their injuries. It doesn't matter if they're not real. Their pain certainly is.

Once they manage to pull free from the xenomorphs ripping and tearing at the undercarriage of the ship, and with at least most of their men on board, Ruiz spends a minute taking stock of their situation. He's a sniper, not a company commander. Not a shipboard weapons specialist or a mechanic or a healer. And for a moment, the futility of his position seems to sink in. What the fuck is he supposed to do here?

"La única salida es a través," he mumbles, dropping into the copilot's seat and bringing up the mission plans again while the others try to tend to the ship and the troops. They've still got a guy to extract, and who the hell knows if there's any way out of this Dream without first accomplishing their objective.

Joe's expression is set. It's not fear or excitement or panic rage. It's a kind of pinch-lipped annoyance, like what he's really mad about is that these fucking things scratched the paint on his ship. "We can't just give this all the finger and leave, can we?" It's not really a question, honestly. "We have to get this guy. We need to find somewhere safer to set down, somewhere that isn't crawling with these fuckers."

Then he's calling back to Roen and Itzhak, "Either of you qualified to do some repair work? Or sense where might be safer to set down?"

As the earth rocks and rolls at Itzhak's command, something very odd happens. The xenomorphs all freeze for a fraction of a second--and then flee. They burrow away, abandoning the field entirely, leaving it strewn with acid-leaking corpses.

At the same time, a frantic voice lights up the radio. "Dropship! Dropship are you reading me?!"

August's shaping reaches out, touches wounded dream Marines. Most of their injuries are from acid. The xenos hit hard enough that if they get their claws into someone, that's almost always game over.

Itzhak, hanging on a handle, is saying, "That ain't like anything we ever seen before!" in a tone mixed with horror, confusion, and genuine wonder. "Never seen 'em burrow like that, like antlions or somethin', this is a whole new thing, I gotta take notes..." and then makes a weird face. Because all of that is the Dream, using him to speak. Not that he isn't into the xenos, because of course he is. He loves all things sleek and bitey.

"Thought you were supposed to be the bug specialist!" one of the Marines yells at him.

Itzhak's lip curls into a snarl, about to yell back at her (if 'her' it is), but his eyebrows tilt up, his expression overcome with shame, and he looks away. This Dream has assigned everyone foreign roles: Ruiz as a commander, August as a soldier, and Itzhak as a scientist.

Except Joe. Apparently he gets to do his thing. Maybe the bad men who send these Dreams are trying him on for size.

The ground is calm now, and Joe can land.

August heals as many as he can, but at a certain point he has to stop and find a corner to crouch in, trying not to dry heave. He has the sense he shouldn't do that in front of the rest of the unit. Someone else's concerns, something the Dream has told him to feel.

He glances up at Itzhak when he speaks that way, wary until the spell breaks. So, the Dream is directing then in a way, molding them into uncomfortable shapes. Ironic, considering the reason August's life detoured...

He slowly gets back up, eyes the radio. "That our missing farmers, or the ship?"

With Joe trying to bring the beast of a ship down to ground, de la Vega reaches over to key the radio, and all but snaps into it while still squinting at the mission readout, "This is dropship, uh.." What the fuck's their designation? His eye catches some faded paneling, and he keys the radio again after a glance over his shoulder at August, "Typhoon. Identify yourself immediately." All Marine, that growl. He slumps back in the copilot's chair while he waits for a response - and for Joe to finish landing - and grunts at Roen, "No fucking clue." His tonguetip's dragged along his lower lip as he surveys his men and their current condition, tries to judge how far they'll get, how their plan of attack's going to need to change based on how many they've lost and what they know now about what they're facing.

Joe's like a cat confronted with a cucumber - ready to jump at the least provocation. The engines are kept hot, the guns cycled up.....and the doors locked, for the moment. Nobody gets off until he's got more info from the guy on the radio.

The voice over the radio is a man. "This is Bates!" That's their guy, the overseer/head farmer/manager of the place. The four men all realize it at the same time: he's a project lead, a Company man (like Itzhak). This planet is his baby. "I sure am glad to see you fellas. C'mon in for a drink." His tone is a liiiittle hysterical.

The dream Marines know their business, at least, even if their business might be lifted from the memories of three people. (If They were mining Itzhak's memories, this would be a very different Dream.) They get shit squared away, wounded bandaged and medicated, asses in seats, ready to deploy the APC.

Itzhak lets go of his deathgrip on the handle to check on August, rub his back as he crouches in the corner. "I don't know how to be a guy like you," he murmurs to him, "or a guy like them."

August's teeth set. Well of course it's the guy they're here for. Company men can be relied upon to show up when it's least convenient and especially if it'll save their asses.

He blinks at Itzhak, smiles a small, unhappy smile. "You're fine. Trust me; you know how to take care of yourself and other people. That's pretty much all there is to it." 'That's all' he says, as if taking care of the likes of him and Ruiz was a walk in the park.

He grips Itzhak's shoulder, eyes the APC. At least it looks big and beefy? It should be able to run over one whole beefalo-xeno. Maybe two.

Bates. It's Bates, their man. Ruiz reaches for the radio again, keys it, voice that rough, warm burr drenched in Spanish, no matter how hard he tries to wring it out of him. "Copy that, Bates. We are incoming in.." He glances at his watch, but it isn't working. Fuck. He makes a guess. "I'm going to say half an hour. You keep your ass parked. And talk to me about security, and any enemy action we're likely to see on our way in. Already ran into some xenomorphs at the LZ here, I'm not looking to have my men fucking massacred." Hand off the mic, he claps Joe on the shoulder and asides to him sotto voce, "You're with us, sir." Then reaches for that nasty scoped rifle of his, dark eyes zeroing in on Roen's, and something in the air between the two men. A bitterness, a cleanness, like ozone or frostmelt.

He doesn't like that idea at all, does Joe. There's that glint in his eyes, that ugly Cherenkov blue. But he gives Ruiz an upnod. A moment where his fingers dance over the boards - leaving her keyed and ready for launch. Dangerous, to have so much automated without someone on board....but if he's going to abandon her, she's not going to be cycled down and cost them precious time if they have to launch in a hurry. Not now.

Then he's heading back and grabbing gear. Yes, he may be the APC driver, but he's going to armor and arm up. Not full Marine armor, but a flexible cuirass and FAST helmet, lighter and more teched up than the grunts'. A short carbine to compliment the pistol already at his side - all of it quick and efficient, his expression set. Then he's slinging himself into the driver's seat without a word. No doubt cementing his reputation amongst the dogfaces as a snotty bitch of a flyboy.

Itzhak huffs one of those rueful single-breathed laughs. "Yeah. All there is to it." So much Jewish irony.

Bates sobs a couple times over the open mic. "You're my deliverance, Typhoon, God bless you." He gives them directions to where he is: not far off, but over open plains ground. Then, laughing bitterly, "Oh, I'm afraid I can't offer you much in the way of security. Only the bison. They hate the bugs, stampede 'em when they can. Amazing way to re-enact their original environment, wouldn't you say? I'll keep the lights on for you. This thing's runnin' on batteries, Bates out."

Itzhak looks over at the cockpit. "Must be why they ran when I shook the place up. Thought it was a stampede." He stands, offers August a hand up. "There can't be more of 'em than a queen's laid eggs, but--" he grimaces, "they can lay a goddamn lot of eggs. Ain't no shortage of hosts here."

All aboard the APC! Everybody gets strapped in. Someone presses a helmet on Itzhak, which he accepts with a sigh.

"Don't be such a fucking princess, Company man," the Marine who gave it to him says, without humor, "we already have a pilot."

"Who landed us on top of bugs," someone else mutters.

Itzhak turns on that dream figure in a fury. "You shut the fuck up! That wasn't his fault, it wasn't Gunny's fault, it wasn't nobody's fault but MINE, so you shut your fucking mouth!"

That makes some of them chuckle in appreciation. Maybe this consultant isn't so bad.

August catches that look from Ruiz, twitches a bit at the sensation which follows it. He shuts his eyes, relaxes into a sigh. A small nod to indicate, 'this is fine' and 'yeah it's working'. "Thanks," he says when he can find his voice. Then he's grabbing his gear with old efficiency, recognizing things he's never seen thanks to the Dream's internal logic.

He smiles a little at the news that the bison hate the xenos and happily dish out some herd justice when able. Well, maybe they should keep that in mind. ...especially since they're not going to have cover. Great.

August watches the interaction between Itzhak and the Marines as it regards Joe, grins when he sets the record straight. "See? You know how to do this just fine."

Ruiz doesn't even bother explaining to Bates that that wasn't quite what he meant by security. Instead, he leans in to mutter to Roen, "You had time yet to go over the layout for the farm? Figure out the best route in for us? Doesn't sound like they've got anything resembling perimeter defense, but.." Can't be too cautious. Leaving the man to that task, he peels off to make sure Itzhak is settled and his helmet and gear secured before barking orders at the rest of the Marines. Which is less him relaying information, as getting them riled up for what's ahead; which may well involve risking life and limb. Again.

Cavanaugh, he simply watches for a long, unreadable moment with that sloe-lidded gaze before clambering into a seat near the back of the APC and buckling in. Rifle across his lap, slight twist of his mouth when the complaints start bubbling up. Itzhak's got things well enough in hand though, even if he's blaming himself unnecessarily. "ALL of you shut the fuck up, and let's get a move on," he growls, slapping the side of the vehicle twice to signal to Joe that they're ready.

Daylight's burning, and this is no world he wants to be on during local night. So Joe wastes no time at all - he's a good enough driver for this vehicle, too, that debarkation isn't jarring. A beat where he makes sure the hatch is closed properly, and then they're rolling for the farm's coordinates.

His lips are set in that thin line, eyes intent. He's not usually among the Marine this much, not a face they know, not in this Dream. Not as much the outsider as Mr. Company Man, but....no love lost between Navy and Marines.

Bates' location isn't in the little town proper. He lives a bit of a ways apart. Maybe to enhance his status, who the hell knows. Sure makes a rescue inconvenient. There's not really a 'farm' proper; the whole continent is the farm, and people live as close or as far apart from each other as they care to, while nature and beasts roam as they will. It's stunningly bucolic, actually, all the advances and pleasures of technology combined with the glory of an environment like the Great Plains.

The APC rumbles over the plains. This time, the ground doesn't erupt under it. This time, the xenos dig themselves out at a cautious distance. They really didn't like Itzhak's earthquake, and they seem to want to avoid another. At least, it seems, they're intelligent enough for that.

But the motion and rumble and the scent of hot blooded, living, human hosts within the vehicle...

the xenos race in, tearing up clods of earth under their split hooflike claws. The windows of the APC fill with glossy hissing darkness.

This time, de la Vega's anticipating the eruption and impending stampede of giant fucking bugs. At the first sign of the ground beginning to shudder beneath them, he swings his rifle free, gets a knee up on his seat and pops the stock of his weapon against his shoulder. There's a low, mechanical whirr as the electronic scope adjusts to his retina and the distance to his target, and for a moment it's like he's back in Afghanistan. Back behind the reticle of that old M40 bolt-action monster. Sound bled away to a dull and distant roar, breath become a fine-tuned thing controlled with millimetre precision, like his gun. Like his crosshairs.

And then POP as one of the xenomorphs' head disappears in a spray of black blood and air-splitting shudder of the rifle's report. POP, POP as two more careen to pieces mid-gallop, limbs flaying every which way, screams high and frantic before they're cut off entirely. "Incoming, boys, six o'clock!" he barks.

August peruses the plans to Bates' compound on his handheld, which--surprise!--aren't very detailed, and have a lot of ambiguous structures and lack fine details. He grimaces, but finds the best approach and passes it up to Joe so he can get them there as efficiently as possible. "Generators should be here, on the west side. He said he's on batteries, so I figure they're fucked somehow." He's about to go on, when it's, why yes! More fucking bugs.

He shifts so he can get a good look out the window, trying to pick out groups he can injure in clusters by causing them to collide or get acid on one another. He sticks to using his most reliable Art, concerned that being so dim will make the others too weak to be effective.

Well, he always did have NASCAR fantasies secondary to wanting to go to space. Redneck ambitions, kids. "These goddamn things fuck up machinery," he mutters. "That acid. Ain't enough baking soda in this whole galaxy to deal with it." A quick look takes in the plotted route, and he's altering course to take it, pushing the lumbering vehicle to its limits.

And while his face is white and set, there's that glow in his eyes. Some part of him is enjoying this immensely.

De la Vega's rifle speaks, rolling across the plains like the voice of God, and the xenos answer with their screams. Three go down, exoskeletons shattered, their virulent lives snuffed out before they have time to know what happened. Some of their fellows turn to see them (or whatever they do instead of seeing, they have no eyes), in attitudes of surprise.

Which surprise increases as August reaches out, carves into glossy black chitin, leaves spurting acid wounds in his wake. The xenos seem to know what all those Marines firing at them out of the APC are about, but sniping and this mystery weapon that tears into them are mysteries.

But the wave comes on regardless. Marines fire pulse rifles and grenades. FWOOM! FWOOM! But the problem with grenades is if you take off a xeno limb or two, it doesn't stop them. Hell, it hardly slows them down.

Itzhak, pretty damn pale himself while he gets rattled around in the harness, trying to brace himself, yells at Joe, "I got it!" and his glimmer blooms like the impact points of Ruiz's sniper bullets and then, no acid hits the APC. It all gets blown away.

August is briefly rewarded by the site of the sniper and Glimmer tearing into the xenomorphs, and he smiles, fierce despite the exhaustion that's creeping up on him. Any risk from the acid is mitigated by Itzhak, so things look good. For a few seconds.

He watches those dark, glossy waves keep coming, feels the thrill fade. They're not gaining ground, they're just bailing out the ocean. The tide's rolling in good and fast now.

Well, Ruiz has more ammo--so to speak--than he does. So he focuses on Ruiz instead, shapes not the aliens attacking them, but Ruiz's ability with his rifle, bolstering it and pushing it beyond its normal limits (which are quite high on their own). He unslings his own weapon--nothing so fancy as Ruiz's, just a standard issue pulse rifle like Joe has.

A snarl from the Marine perched half atop the back seat of the APC, as his shots find their targets. It's been years since he's worked at this kind of range, and rarely without a spotter. But when he braces his weapon again, it's with the aid of glimmer; he can feel Roen's mind guiding his sights. A whisper of correction here, a nudge there. A brief flash of recollection; Glyndower and his ridiculous tobacco habit and his syrupy Texas drawl.

Three more shots; one at range, one catches a xenomorph racing in on their vehicle. And the last, he disengages the scope completely and shoulders the thing like a regular carbine to tear down a creature that tries to lunge through the driver's side windshield at Joe. "Sing out if you're hurt," he barks at his men, clearly including Itzhak and Joe and August in that order.

Glyndower - probably currently in Hawaii, bellowing at infant Marine snipers as they slog through tropic jungle. God rest his soul. Glyndower would recognize the maniac behind the wheel, in fact, too. Joe's bared his teeth in a rictus grin, all monkey threat and imitation of the lipless horrors trying to scramble their way in.

Then he's keying the radio, "Bates, Typhoon's APC, incoming. You better be cocked, locked, and ready to rock when we get there, because we're bringing a lot of company with us." Not even a flinch as Ruiz peels the monster off the windshield - it falls away in a castanet clatter of sharp hoof-claws, like some sort of nightmare Spanish dancer.

Glossy terrors go down screeching, spraying acid, tumbling into the bodies of their sister nightmares. Bates' voice comes over the radio again. "Typhoon, approach on the northeast side, get past the fence, and pull on into the garage. Got a little crowd control for 'em."

As the APC races towards their destination, Bates' residence (visible across the flat praire from quite a ways) looms swiftly into view. All the houses and buildings on 51 Pegasi are roomy--with a whole planet, why shouldn't they be--but his residence is a whole Southern plantation-style mansion. It should be humming with activity, robots tending the grounds, but there's no power. Everything is dark. Any maintenence robots are in hibernation.

Bugs seethe in their wake as they flee across the plains. And there's the fence, no mere chain-link but a massive structure capable of (presumably) turning buffalo, and as the APC lurches through the open gate a crackling field of electricity lights the entire fence up like New Year's Eve. Bugs screech and peel off, some of them caught in the field and retreating smoking from the joints of their exoskeletons. Better not breathe that. They don't follow, although a couple are clawing their way over the APC, and get shot off by Ruiz and his Marines, falling into sizzling heaps.

'The garage' is clearly an underground garage, a smooth concrete ramp dipping some yards before it levels out into a handsome collectors' garage. This isn't really a workplace, but somewhere to keep treasured vehicles, of which there are several. Everything is smooth and pristine, although the lights are low to save power.

And there's Bates' voice over the intercom. "Welcome home, Typhoon." He might be drunk. Really drunk.

August shoots into the xenomorphs a few times, but stops when something occurs to him. "Animals," he says, and looks at Ruiz. "They're animals. We," a glance at Itzhak--wondering if he can be included there?--back to Ruiz, "can turn them on one another." Maybe. Well, whatever. He's not a bad shot when he's hunting, but deer don't come at him in huge waves.

He suits action to words, trying to find a xenomorph mind, such as it is, and turn it on the others.

But then they're fleeing into...what looks like a damned plantation. And the garage is definitely a showroom. "Christ," he mutters, realizing what this means. "This is the kind of guy they," he means the Dream marines, "expected Itzhak to be."

Good job, Roen, de la Vega inwardly praises, both for the help pegging those monsters, and getting them on the correct course for the front gate of that electrified fence. He can feel the current as they pass by it; the way it jumps and sparks and reaches for him, aches to touch him. He hangs off the side of the vehicle, hooked by a boot on the doorframe, dust kicked up over the back of his BDUs and into his dark, buzzed hair as he takes aim at a pair of stragglers. Slows them down enough to get them tangled up in the fence, and the sound and smell of them being electrocuted makes him look away sharply. "You think so?" he replies to August, regarding hijacking the creatures' minds. He squints slightly as he thinks about that. "Probably have another chance to find out, yeah?" And then they're diving down into the garage, and the relative darkness.

"Buen manejo, señor," he murmurs to Cavanaugh before hopping out. His boots hit the ground before the vehicle's quite stopped, and he prowls forward with a hand signal indicating for his men to use caution and secure the perimeter. "Rosencrantz, with me," he barks at his erstwhile lover.

"Jesus God, he's like the sci fi version of my asshole uncle with the five Ferraris," Joe mutters. He's testing the hole in the crystal of the windshield with a dubious finger. Then he glances back at August. "Remember that," he says. "Also, if there's a hive, gotta be a queen. If you can put the whammy on her, maybe she can make 'em really go nuts on each other."

Then he's getting out, too, in an easy swing. Swagger intact, save for the gloss of sweat on his brow. Ruiz's compliment has him smirking a little, and he sings (or rather chants), under his breath, "Done tol' you once, you son of a bitch, I'm the best that's ever been."

Itzhak, though the rest of him is shaking with an absolutely brutal adrenaline rush, unbuckles himself with steady hands. And laughs, also shaky, when Ruiz barks at him, wobbles to his feet, knees quivering. "Yeah yeah, orderin' me around again," he mumbles, grinning uncontrollably. "JeeZUS, what a ride." But he obeys his lover anyway, going to him. Once they're out of the APC, he looks it over, pats its armored hide. "Good girl." He looks at August, blankly. "We do it to people and to animals, but I dunno. Can you convince a swarm of wasps to knock that shit off? You ever tried? Even under controlled conditions? I think Cavanaugh's idea's got merit. Control the queen, control the swarm."

This Dream makes him talk like that.

As the faceless dream Marines disembark, some with combat shakes and some stone-cold and some yelling, one reports to Ruiz. "We've got wounded."

From the far side of the garage, the frosted glass door opens, and here comes Bates. He kind of looks like Joe, tall and lean, blonde haired, nobly-carved face. As he gets closer...he looks exactly like Joe, but wearing a gorgeous, if rumpled, tailored shirt and pants in expensive material.

Dreams also create dopplegangers.

He's also drunk as a lord as he strides over. And he's got the sore nose and bloodshot eyes of a cocaine user. "Well, boys, you're a sight for sore eyes," he says grandly. "'fraid we can't go into the house, not anymore, but my basement ain't too bad."

August nods in response to Ruiz and Joe, watching the aliens who don't come past the fence seethe beyond the barrier. "Yeah," he murmurs, and shoulders his rifle. Then they've been swallowed up by relative safety. He cuts a look at Joe. "I wouldn't expect a queen to be something I could handle. Not strong enough." He nods at Ruiz. "I bet he could, though."

He hops with the Dream marines, after Ruiz, eyeing the APC now that they have a moment to assess the damage. A mechanic he's not, but this other person is, to some extent. "It's not going to take another run like that. Not without some serious repairs." He turns to look at what else is in the garage, because the chances they'll need to comandeer it are, well...high.

But now their host has arrived. And it's...er...

August stares at Bates. Then at Joe. Then Bates. He clears his throat. "Ah, why not the house?"

The compact, ferocious-eyed Marine who's been inexplicably cast as the leader of this little ragtag group offers no insight whatsoever, as to hijacking the queen. As to whether he's capable, or if he thinks he could pull it off. Glimmer is something he tends to use a little more sparingly, after all. When one of his men draws up to give a rundown on injuries, he pauses to converse with him. Hitches his chin toward the APC, where he's certain he saw a first aid kit, and starts to say something else when Joe appears. Except Joe's right over there. And.. FUCK.

His rifle's unslung, comes to life with a low whine, finger brushing the trigger as he locks his gaze with those too-familiar blues. "Who the fuck are you?" Then a quick glance Cavanaugh's way, and a shudder like wind cutting through a stand of hemlocks, like his mind is trying to seek the measure of the man. Are you who I think you are?

Joe manages to not fall into gibbering madness. But there is a distinctly glassy look in the pilot's eyes, as he contemplates Bates. It's his face. Well, it's his face after a week's leave in Bangkok, anyway. "I didn't realize they were sending us to get a relative," he says. One can all but see the wheels turning behind his eyes. This is the Alien universe, androids are a thing. Replicants are a thing. He might be a thing, if light years beyond the basic pleasure model. It's possible.

Then he glances back at the APC. "She's definitely gonna need some work. Now, I could maybe remote pilot the Typhoon here, if there's space enough within to land her. I left her live," he says. August gets a bewildered look. Look, it's rich asshole me.

That was redundant.

Then he's reassembling his composure, "Mr. Bates, we need to go. This planet's going to need to be placed under quarantine, clearly. These things are incredibly virulent." And watch Bates prove to be David.

"Only got enough juice for maybe one more of those jolts," Bates says to August, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there's another version of him standing right there. "Grid's been down for, oh, a couple few weeks now. Sorta lost count. I reckon we want to save that one for a rainy day." He beams at everyone. "Stampede protection, works on all kinds of herds, someone's gonna make a lot of money and I'm gonna make sure it's me."

When Ruiz swings his rifle up to point it at him, though, Bates very abruptly loses a lot of that swagger. He flings his hands up, blue eyes widening, and stumbles backwards in terror. "H-h-hey now, Marine, I'm not the one you wanna shoot, last I checked I still got blood, not acid, in my veins!" He looks in appeal to the other two, and at Itzhak, he blinks. "Rosencrantz? I'd know that schnozz anywhere. They sent you? I thought you--" he stops himself, clears his throat. He's gone pale and damp with the sweat of fear. "I'm real glad to see you. You're the expert, now why don't you tell this fine fellow who, ha ha, seems a li'l worked up that I'm not a fucking bug!"

Itzhak was also looking between Bates and Joe, eyebrows way up. When Bates appeals to him, he thinks about it, shrugs, and says to August, "Scan 'im so we can get the hell out of here."

August licks his lips, looks askance at Ruiz, maybe for a confirmation. This Joe looks the right age. Pilot Joe doesn't. On the other hand, Pilot Joe's a reasonably competant adrenaline junkie pilot--possibly a redundant statement all its own--whereas this Joe is a guy who gets drunk when he's facing death.

Well, August can't blame him on that one, not really. Who wants to die giving birth to an alien? Literally no one.

"Obviously this is Bates," he says, tone careful. He's giving Ruiz a look like 'let's not try to prove who's who by shooting one of them, that won't help'. He pulls out his handheld, attaches a little device to the end of it. He just knows he should do that. Then he's approaching Bates, eyes still on Ruiz. Now the look is 'maybe also don't shoot me'. It's a medical attachment, for scanning people to check for known pathogens. And, of course, parasites.

Problem is, de la Vega looks like a mean sumbitch who'd as soon put two rounds in Bates's forehead and use his body as a meatshield to get them the fuck out of here, as rescue him per the mission. Problem is, he's straddled that line a man never wants to have to straddle, more times than a man should have to. And he hasn't always come out on the right side of it.

"Do it," he tells Roen on the heels of Itzhak's order, voice quiet. Inflectionless. His rifle stays up, reticle lined up with his right eye, little red dot hovering somewhere around Bates's throat while August gets out his scanner and approaches the man. Ruiz prowls a couple of paces backward so he can keep both the Company man and their pilot in his field of view; he clicks his tongue to one of the other Marines and nods toward the direction they came in, like, get that fucking perimeter set up. "Generator's fucked?" he asks Bates in that low, husky-warm murmur. "Maybe Rosencrantz can take a look at it for you, yeah?"

"Couple weeks now?" Joe's voice is slow. This guy looks more like his present day Gray Harbor self than he does. The effect is vertiginous. But the pilot is going colder and colder, posture more rigid. He's still got his own rifle, a short carbine, slung at his side. "I'll say again, Mr. Bates, if there is anything or anyone here you need to take with you, then tell us now. Because we are leaving."

It won't be that easy. It's never that easy. He's seen all these movies, even the crappy ones with the Predators.

Marines, those well enough to do so, get on that fucking perimeter.

"There's nobody." Bates has his hands up, fear twisting his handsome face. He looks at Joe, and Ruiz, ignoring August. "There's nobody, I'm the last of 'em, they're all dead. Cocooned up, just like," he nods at Itzhak, begging him with his eyes, "just like you wrote up in your thesis. Oh, those specimens, Rosencrantz, you'd sell your own mother for one, I know you would. We could come outta this doing very well indeed."

Itzhak stares at him in disgust. "Maybe we oughta leave him," he says to Ruiz, casual-like, eyes locked on Bates, who laughs wheezily, grinning in fear.

"That's my Itzil, ruthless to a fault," he says, throat closing up. "Just like old times, hmm?"

August eyes the device as it scans. It's not a high power medical device; it's the kind you bring on a rough and tumble mission, so the range is short enough that he has to get within a couple feet of Bates. He wonders why a combat engeineer is doing a medic's job, and some part of him answers: because they weren't figuring a medic was going to be able to save anyone; they'd come back to the ship alive, or not. A medic was unlikely to stop anyone from dying en route, not when it was xenomorphs.

He goes about his task silently, listening to the interplay between the other four while he works.

...and then he comes across the other reason a medic wasn't sent. The screen on the device flares red in two bands. 'FOREIGN PARASITE DETECTED' reads the hard black text. There it is, plain as day on the little x-ray like readout: a huge, curled shape dead center of Bates' abdomen. And who'd stowed this little piece of scanning tech with the engineer? Ruiz? Someone higher up, suspicious of being tasked to rescue a lone company man?

The device doesn't buzz or beep, so only two people can see the screen: himself and Bates. He slowly raises his eyes to look at Bates. Ruiz, Joe, and Itzhak can't see the device, but they can see August's very careful, tense reaction. There's nothing casual about his posture.

Bates is talking about how they're all dead, cocooned and Roen's skimming his device over the guy like a fucking transcorder or whatever they call those things on star trek. And the Marine squints slightly as he watches, and keeps that little red dot painted on the guy's throat, while he prattles about old times. Just like old times. With Itzhak. Why would Bates have any kind of fucking old times with Itzhak Rosencrantz? A surge of jealousy hits him like a tidal wave, and then he catches the look on Roen's face. And shuts off his rifle with a low, mechanical whine of the thing powering down. It's dropped into its sling like he's going to back down and listen to reason, except he does nothing of the sort.

Instead, he draws his sidearm out of its holster and takes two swift steps toward Bates, and shoves the muzzle between his eyes. A low snarl, "Is he compromised?" He's asking Roen, not Bates. "Cavanaugh, get ready to bug the fuck out of here. How quickly can you get us moving? Rosencrantz, I need you to check the hull integrity, make sure we'll last the return trip to the LZ."

Understanding dawns, albeit slowly, and growing horror follows. Somehow, it's of a piece that there's this guy wearing his face who's infected. If Dreams draw from the psyches of their participants, what better to express that lifelong conviction of his own toxicity, his own poisonous virulence, than this?

There's a kind of numb-lipped stillness to the way Joe says, "Yes, he's compromised."

"I can get the Typhoon here," he says. "Call it remotely. I could have her here in minutes. We just gotta hold out long enough. She'll make it to a stable orbit, the Patusan can get us." Referring to their mothership, the carrier Patusan.

Itzhak seems to be wondering that too. Old times? What? With his usual lack of ability to pick up on cues, he doesn't know what Bates is talking about. "What old times?" he says, kinda blank. Then he gets it--and he actually cringes, making a gurgle of disgust like he just stepped in a pile of something cold yet squooshy. "Ugh! Augh, no, gross, no, NO! You're fucking slime, Bates, fuck no!" He stomps off to attend to the APC, going 'ugh' and shaking out his hands like a cat flicking water from its paws.

Bates laughs--oh but then he's got the muzzle of Ruiz's sidearm between his eyes. That gets a whimper out of him, his mouth contorting downwards. If there was any doubt this man is not Joseph Cavanaugh? That whimper might well put paid to it. This man is a coward. Slime, just like Itzhak called him.

Now he locks eyes with August, past the muzzle of the gun, and there is nothing but pleading in his face. No sass or prodding for a reaction. He's got to beg for his life and he's well aware. He's also well aware of what August saw on that scan.

"Don't, please don't, please," he whispers, hoarse.

August grimaces as Ruiz moves in with his gun. He doesn't answer right away, momentarily distracted by how Itzhak freaks out at the idea of carrying on with Bates and chooses to handle it by fleeing to inspect the APC.

He focuses on Bates again. "Yeah," he confirms, holding up the device so Ruiz can see it. He swallows, lowers it. He starts to suggest something, stops. What would healing a parasite involve? It wasn't a disease; it was its own animal. His mind offers some ready answers, all of them horrifying.

He knows suggesting they get it surgically removed so he can heal Bates is going to be met with a big old no, maybe in the form of Ruiz just blowing the guy's head off. But he does think of one useful bit of information. "It's pretty far along. Killing him might pop it out."

Cavanaugh's cut a brief glance from de la Vega, when he mentions being able to call up the Typhoon remotely. And the dark-eyed man spends a moment or two longer than he strictly should, just gazing at Joe, that complicated, unreadable look on his face. Finally, "Yeah. Do it." And then he turns back to Bates, and considers next what to do with him as August gives his assessment.

And there's a moment where his finger closes around the trigger, and he's about a millimetre away from squeezing it. It's hard to say what stops him. Maybe the news that the parasite's pretty far along. Maybe the face of this man that's so painfully familiar; a face he's loved for decades, except.. different. Joe, but not Joe. The muzzle of his gun slips, drags down Bates's cheek and under his chin, which he shoves upward roughly when he reaches it.

"How long until it pops, you figure, Roen?" he asks brusquely.

It's him, but it isn't him. The bone structure, the coloring - the face he sees in the mirror, every morning. But the animating spirit behind is is totally different. Every time he's faced death, it's been with more grace than this. If I should fall from grace with God....

Enough of a connection, though, that he's still moved to pity. "Make your peace, Bates," Joe advises, voice rough. "You're not leaving. De la Vega will give you a better death than she will. It'll be quick. You won't suffer."

Then, calmly, he advises, "Shoot her before she hatches. We know where she lies. Shoot her in the head before she can emerge. One of you should be able to hold her mentally if she starts to wake up. Or I can try....but I need to get the Typhoon in."

Itzhak dashes back over, moving fast in that particular way he has to slice like a blade through space, and grabs August's wrist to look at the scan. He did not like what he heard, and he likes what he sees even less.

"Why aren't you dead?!" he snarls at Bates. "She's fully developed! Why hasn't she popped yet? WHY, BATES, FUCKING TELL ME!"

Bates, tears gliding down his face, swallows convulsively against the barrel of Ruiz's gun. "I don't know. I don't know, so help me God I don't know. I'm a rancher, I'm not... this isn't my field. It's yours." He smiles at Itzhak in a ghastly fashion. "You tell me, Rosencrantz. Freeze me for the trip home, and I'm all yours."

Itzhak lets August's wrist go. His expression is dire. "Why would a queen hang around unhatched?" His eyes go to Ruiz, then August, then Joe, then Ruiz again. It's to him that Itzhak speaks next. "Yannow, bees don't develop one queen at a time. They brood five or six. Then when they mature, the queens fight it out. Only one survives to form a new hive."

That's when Bates tries to break away from Ruiz and run.

August relaxes when Ruiz opts to not kill Bates. So now he doesn't need to find out if he was willing to just dismantle the gun in Ruiz's hand. The calm from when Ruiz dialed him back earlier persists; when Itzhak yanks his wrist, he lets him, gives him a sympathetic look. He has to wonder, what does he remember of this man, if anything? Is the dream looking to torment Itzhak by making him watch someone who's Joe--someone he might have other memories of--die, by their hands no less?

But now he's keying into something. She. Well, he's a soldier, not a xenobiologist. "If there's other queens around here ready to hop out, we need to--"

And then, Bates is running. August kind of stares at him. And, without thinking, he gives it a shot. He reaches out to that gestating queen's mind. What is she waiting for? What's going on? Where are the others?

It probably won't work, he's too weak. But he gives it a try.

There's a lot happening, then, all at once. Itzhak's yelling at Bates; Bates is weeping, begging for his life. August is trying to get his mental fingers on the slippery thing that is the queen's mind, and Cavanaugh.. Cavanaugh's being what he always is, under duress. Cool as steel, both of them forged from the same fire, military men, and shoot her before she hatches. Hadn't he already thought of that?

As Bates pulls away and tries to make a run for it, the muzzle of his sidearm is adjusted. Throat, and then sternum, trigger squeezed without hesitation, hammer slammed home with a CRACK, CRACK of report as two bullets tear into not-Joe. He looks into those blue, blue eyes throughout, and he tries not to be ill as he does so.

Then, "Roen, I need you to check us." With his transcorder-thingy. "Now."

He never ran. He never begged. Not in Afghanistan. Not over Kazakhstan. Not in Savannah. That isn't him. Later, if they survive, he can get drunk or high or ill or whatever it takes to deal with this nightmare.

Now, though, Joe's heading into the APC to start calling in the Typhoon. They're leaving.

Well, the ones who aren't infected are leaving.

They'd know, right? If they were. Surely.

The queen is quiescent when August touches her mind. Sleeping, coiled neatly under a sternum that looks a hell of a lot like Joe's. She's so big, she's jostled his lungs and liver and stomach all out of place. Just like a human baby. She's in standby mode, but when August touches her, she wakes. Hungry! is the first thing that hits August. Then, of all things, a surge of love for her host. He's done so well. Now he'll live forever in her brood and they will be strong.

And then, it's time to be born and go to her fight with her sisters.

Ruiz's bullet pierces both queen and host, then. They both scream. The queen tries to claw her way out, injured, as Bates hits the floor. She kills him just about on the spot, raking all his most important organs as she uncoils and flails. He makes that symptomatic rattling gasp, exhibits the reflex of grabbing at his chest...then he's gone, bright blue eyes dulling. Blood splatters absolutely everywhere.

The queen scrabbles out of him, shrieking and thrashing. Itzhak may not be a cool-headed military man forged in the fires of war, but he's got some reflexes on him and he acts. Clothes won't hold the queen when they might hold a person, so that's not gonna work. But lucky for him the place is full of cars. One throws its e-brake off, squeals into motion, and runs over the queen's tail, pinning her.

"Kill her!" he shouts, probably unnecessarily.

The dream Marines are all pretty alarmed by the commotion, turning to see who's firing and why, but then one of them screams, dropping his/its rifle. A facehugger, a big one, has dropped from the ceiling and is wrapping long finger-legs around the Marine's head. The others react, but don't know what to do. If they shoot the facehugger, their buddy dies too.

August stares blankly, surprised at the queen's...thoughts. Yes, those are thoughts, and not those of a dumb animal.

And then Bates Who Isn't Joe is shot, the queen is shot, and they're on the floor and there's blood all over. Bates dies, and August watches.

Even that's too much for Ruiz's calming effect to handle. August stumbles aside, coughing, dry-heaving. Where are the other queens? Did they hear this one?

The commotion doesn't stop him from pulling up the scanning device and turning it at himself in an automatic manner. He's been given an order, he'll follow it. His real self's thinking is on a parallel track with Joe's: how would that be possible? When would it have happened?' But this was a Dream; it didn't have to make sense. Here was Joe (Real Joe), half his current age. If that didn't need to make sense, did anything? And even as he waits for the readout, he knows he should be trying to tear these things apart, at least then maybe the people they're attacking have a chance at survival.

...or were they all lured here to be cocooned?

De la Vega's hand is steady as he goes to finish the job with a round put in Bates's head. But it isn't necessary; the guy thrashes a couple of times, gurgles, spews blood and finishes dying before he can get a round dropped into the chamber. Which is likely just as well, for the number it's doing on his head, and his heart, to watch this. "Lo siento," he murmurs, nearly inaudible over the ear-splitting shriek of the injured, furious queen lunging at them, and the scream of one of his men as another xenomorph drops down from the ceiling.

Quarters are too close for his rifle, and he could easily empty out the clip on that sidearm and barely put a dent in these motherfuckers. So what does he do? He calls up some lightning, instead. Weapon dangling in his right hand, he raises his left palm up, and arcs of electricity spark and shudder and surge from his fingertips. Then the circuit closes, and all of his power's shunted out of him in a jagged knife of alternating current that splits and rips into both xenomorphs in the blink of an eye, cooking right through carapace and flesh and turning it to char on contact.

The poor little faceless grunt. He's already dead, though. As they will be if they don't get the everliving hell out of here. So Joe's calling in his wounded ship, for there's no reason to suppose Bates has- had- anything that'll reach orbit. And for the Patusan to get them, they need to reach low orbit, at least.

The Typhoon is coming with her namesake's speed in a scream of engines, nosedown like a Black Hawk in a hurry. Joe's in the APC's cockpit, attending....but that arc of electricity has his head snapping up. "Jesus H. Christ," he breathes, reverently. Still insulated in that cocoon of cold professionalism. He'll save his freaking out for later.

Then one hand darts out to flick on the APC's speakers. Even if it's for Ruiz to give orders on this trip, he's not waiting to confer. It's all gone vastly pear-shaped, and it is time to bug the fuck out. "Typhoon is inbound, ETA <time>. Everyone back aboard the APC. Marines, we are leaving."

The queen and facehugger both let out awful shrieks. August's faded connection to the queen feeds him pain, thwarted rage. It's her right to be slain by a sister queen, and he's taking it from her, and he's ruining her host's next-life in her brood and this isn't how it's supposed to be--and then she's dead. Smoking from every joint, curled over in an arachnid attitude of death. She and Bates lie twisted together like lovers.

The facehugger drops from the dream Marine in a similar attitude. There's shouts from over there not to shoot, the acid will splash, and somehow they manage to refrain from blowing the corpse the fuck away. Then they're making for the APC with a quickness, the eight or so of them, retreating in an orderly yet very hasty fashion, pulse rifles aimed on the doors. Faceless, not really people, only cogs in a Dream machine--but they're still Marines and they still have jobs to do.

Itzhak is standing perfectly still. He's looking at the mess on the floor, at the dead man who looks like the Joe he knows. But his expression is inwardly-focused horror. One hand slowly rises to his chest, presses down on his sternum. "...no," he whispers, eyes straining wide. "Don't. Go back to sleep. It's not time. It's not time, she's already dead, it's not time..." Very softly, unheard among the shouting and chaos, he hums a lullaby, pressing on his sternum.

Bates said the Rosencrantz he knew would sell his own mother for a specimen. Maybe the dream Itzhak didn't need to. He found a better solution.

August sags with relief when the device beeps green. (Well, with some yellow warnings about hypertension, but he ignores those. Fuck you, Dream tricorder.) The sudden lightning startles him, yanks him out of whatever odd fugue he was in. Just in time to be hit with the queen's death throes.

He grits his teeth against her dying fury, choking back a sob. This isn't how it's supposed to be. They're just monsters, aren't they? Aren't they? He drops the device, digging his fingers into his hair. Where are they. Where are the others--

There's one. Right there, where Itzhak is standing.

Shit.

He lowers is hands slowly, staring at Itzhak. "de la Vega," he says, voice hollow. He's not sure he has enough Mental to force the queen to quiet down. Ruiz would; he has to. Maybe then they can get her out of Itzhak and he can heal Itzhak back up (don't think about that don't think about it)...

He looks torn, de la Vega. Utterly, beguilingly torn between knocking another round into the chamber of his sidearm and discharging it into Bates's face. And another, and another, and another until all that remains is meat. Torn between this, and gathering that familiar body into his arms and cradling it to him and weeping over it, because it's Joe, and it's Bates, and it's Joe. Isn't it? Isn't it?

That thought is still rattling around in his head, drowning out thoughts of almost all else, when August invokes his name all empty-sounding like that. He swallows, tears his eyes away from the still-twitching queen slumped on top of not-Joe, and seems almost afraid to look at Itzhak. Itzhak standing perfectly still, fingers on his sternum, singing a lullaby to the unborn creature coiled up inside his body.

Terror in the shine of his eyes, even as his mind sings with calm, like a river overflowing its banks. duerme ya, dulce bien, duerme ya, dulce amor, dulces sueños tendrás, al oir mi canción, it whispers to the rousing queen inside his lover, even as he's dropping a round in the chamber of his sidearm and backing up to the APC slowly. "Get the fuck inside," he tells Roen. "Get in."

That was what he was afraid of. Not death in the abstract, but a bad one. Slow degeneration, pain beyond his ability to bear it....but even that has relief at the end. Silence, darkness, and nothing more. His gambles were already predicated on a quick death: you fail the landing and end in a smear of fire across the deck. The rocket fails and explodes on launch, or breaks up on re-entry, and a few moments of tumbling terror and then the dark.

But Joe's not the one on the floor in a tangle of blood and ichor and cartilage. He's alive in this nightmare and there are more throws of the dice yet before they either win free or fail and die. Joe's busy, very busy, summoning the Typhoon in like a falconer with a recalcitrant hawk. Too busy to consciously notice what Rosencrantz is doing, as his hands flicker over the boards with the deftness of a concert pianist.

Though one pauses, splays over his own belly for a moment, pressing. Like an expectant mother wondering if she's showing yet. No. Nothing.

A glance betrays that neither Rosencrantz nor de la Vega is getting on. "Get. Aboard," comes the tinny, amplified voice from the speakers. "We're out of here in minutes."

Itzhak's eyes meet Ruiz's, though the rest of him doesn't move. His chest rises and falls as he hums a lullaby from the Old World, something in a minor key, probably in Yiddish if he was singing it out loud. Innerly, he's Singing, feeding sleepy peace to the female thing nestled so intimately amidst his organs. August joins in, and then de la Vega himself in a flowing river of sweet calm. More, much more than either August or Itzhak could manage, more than they could together, Ruiz washes the nascent queen in the urge to go back to sleep. The stirring flickers of savage life under Itzhak's breastbone subside. A low, throttled sound escapes Itzhak's throat, a stuffed-down sob.

"She's asleep," he says, his voice strangled, his eyes on his boyfriend, a question on his face as he glances at the APC.

Should he go with them, knowing what they know now? It's always Itzhak's way to fling himself into danger if it'll protect his people. I will be your shield.

There's the chatter of pulse rifles. More facehuggers are emerging from wherever they were hiding, secreted in some warm dark space, maybe amidst the generators. They leap from under cars, drop from where they were curled behind ceiling panels. They too want to do their part to ensure the survival of the species. The Marines are shouting and cursing and laying down cover fire. Facehuggers squeal as they're torn apart.

Typhoon is coming in hot as Joe pushes her limping engines. Her monitors show masses of darkness outside the fence. Only one of those masses is xenomorphs.

The other? Bison. Hadn't Bates said the animals hate the xenos?

The queen grows quiescent under their combined efforts. More relief August can't feel, since it's just one less disastrous disaster in an unending chain of disasters. And now a whole new disaster is here to take up the space. August hears that sound of the gun being prepped.

He moves, and it might seem like he's getting on the APC, but in fact all he does and put himself between Itzhak and Ruiz. "Not without him. We'll keep her quiet, get on the ship. A surgeon can yank her out and I can heal him." Or there are other, worse ways to do it, but he's going to not think about those. He's just not. Right now, they have to get out of here.

The sniper backs up another step toward the APC, grips the door handle in a gloved hand and tugs it open, all without taking that steady, smoke-dark gaze off Itzhak's. The flood of xenomorphs from the perimeter, from the ceiling, from the windows and the generators and the heating vents and maybe the fucking floorboards seems to happen in slow motion. Sleek black bodies and long tails and high-pitched screams as a few of them are torn apart by the Marines' guns. Black blood sprays the wall, sprays de la Vega's helmet as he jerks his head to the side to avoid the twisting, flailing body of one shot out of midair.

His Gift will hold her. He knows this. It won't hold her for long, but it will hold her. Even now, there's blood leaking from his nose, staining his teeth, with the effort to maintain it.

His heart hammers in his chest, and his finger caresses the trigger of his gun. Then he hoists the weapon up in both hands, muzzle aimed right between Itzhak's eyes as August moves to get between them, which means he winds up pointing it at August instead. Except it's neither of the two men he's gunning for. There's a scream like nails on chalkboard as a slick black xenomorph crashes out of a burst pipe and launches itself at Itzhak's back, and Javier adjusts his line of fire to put two rounds into the meat of its body. It doesn't end it, but it's enough to keep it off his friends for the time it'll take them to, "Get the FUCK on board like Cavanaugh says or I'll shoot you both next." And then the snarly Marine is swinging inside.

There is no language like Russian for sheer inventiveness in obscenity. None. And Joe, for once, is distracted enough to leave the mic hot for an unguarded moment, so those still standing there are treated to a few moments of near-poetry, pure and lyrical, as he expresses his opinion of the whole mess. Too bad none of them speak the language. Somewhere, in orbit over the real Earth, a pair of cosmonauts are blushing and wondering why.

But there's no confirmation that they're all aboard, and he devotes a second to peering off at the side windshield. A blink, and it falls into place, that hesitation. "Rosencrantz, fucking do it," he says, coldly. "We've got you. We all live or we all die, but if you keep standing there with your dick in your hand, it'll be Door #2. No man left behind."

There's the downscaling shriek of the Typhoon skids down, as close to the garage door as he can put her. Her side door doesn't open - that'll be as last minute as Joe can make it, lest it give unwanted passengers a chance to hop aboard.

The gun swings up to point at Itzhak's forehead, and he swallows. And nods, a tiny dip of his head. Yes. That's the correct course of action. There's no fear in his eyes, only that gut-deep determination that refuses to back down, that will do anything, anything for those he loves. He sold himself to Monaghan to protect his sister. He leaped between a hunter and her quarry to defend the mystic elk that reminded him so strongly of August.

Now, death sleeping underneath his heart, he'll submit to Ruiz's bullet to protect these men who have become so important to him. "Roen, don't," he says, low, to get August to move out of the fucking way.

Even so, when Ruiz pulls the trigger, he flinches, eyes flickering shut--so it takes him a second to realize he's still alive and August is still alive and there's a wounded facehugger squirming behind him. And Joe and Ruiz are ordering him to get the fuck on board and he breaks into motion, grabbing August if he has to, bolting into the APC in a few long graceful bounds. Marines grab the two of them, haul them into place, someone shouting, "GO GO GO!"

Outside, as Typhoon touches down, the adult xenos are scaling the fence. It's not electrified right now.

This is a relief August can feel, that he's right in thinking Ruiz wasn't going to shoot Itzhak. (On the other hand there was no telling if Itzhak would try to make one of them do it to spare them the threat of the queen, but that's why August got in the way, in case Itzhak got any stupid ideas.) Joe's reiteration of Ruiz's order to both get on board isn't one that needs repeating; August half-turns and takes Itzhak by the elbow as Itzhak grabs him. "Come on. Let's get you strapped in." So she doesn't get jostled too much and wake up, he means.

He sees the xenos scaling the fence, pauses in the act of getting in the APC. "We need to turn that thing back on," he says, scanning around the garage. Is the switch in here? Not that August has much reach with movement, but he checks around the interior, trying to find it and toggle it. Unfortunately, it has no interest in being located, or he's not strong enough. Either way.

Well, there's one other option, and since Ruiz is keeping the queen under wraps and Joe is flying, he pauses at the back of the APC, before heading in, to try and kick start it. The lightning that that jumps out from his hand is a bit more than he's used to--maybe some of his Glimmer is waking back up?--and a purple color, not unlike the fire he can summon.

They do. Need to turn that fence back on, if they've any hope of defending themselves against the incoming swarm. But de la Vega's far too busy trying to keep the slumbering xenomorph inside his lover from bursting out of its confines and tearing him to pieces. And then tearing them to pieces. The capillaries in his eyes are bright and flooded, and he swipes some blood off his mouth with the sleeve of his BDUs as he shoves over to help get Itzhak settled and harnessed in. No fond touches, no kisses, no sweet nothings; he's in Marine mode, and there's only room for the mission now. Get them the fuck out of here. Keep that thing from waking up. And then figure the rest out, if they make it that far.

Then he hears the Typhoon landing outside, that distinctive whine of engines throttling back and landing skids making contact with the ground. A gloved hand closes around the strap above his head, dark eyes cutting to Rosencrantz's, then away again as he tucks his rifle in close to his thigh. "Get the fuck inside, Roen," he mutters under his breath as the other man tries to get that fence electrified.

Off they go - Joe peels out like he really is trying to catch up with a race car pack. Itz can consider this his audition for those illicit races he goes off to. He's heading for the Typhoon in a squeal of tires, as she lowers her hatch to admit them. He apparently intends to judge it to a nicety and drift the APC in like it really is a hot rod. No eyes for the oncoming wave of dark fur and darker chitin.

And Itzhak? He's in surviving-this-nightmare mode, in his own way. After permitting Ruiz to strap him in, he clamps both hands over his sternum (not that it will help), forcing himself to breathe deep, let each breath out slow, on a whispered song in a language that sounds quite a lot like Spanish. "Durme, durme - mi alma donzella - durme, durme - sin ansia y dolor..." He rocks gently back and forth, as much as the U harness permits.

He has one job now.

The Marines know their jobs, as Joe floors the APC towards the dropship and into the teeth of the tide. Alien hulks skitter up the fence with far too much speed for their size--until August turns it on with a crackle and a surge. POW! That drives most of them back, but several already made it into the perimeter. But that's okay. Because these Marines light those bugs the fuck up. Pulse rifles rattle, grenades explode, Marines driving back the enemy with all the ordanance at their disposal.

They yell, too.

"PUNCH IT, PRINCESS!"

"Haha, eat THAT, bug!"

Meanwhile, August nearly falls off the APC. He gets a fantastic view of black chitinous forms lunging and screaming and being shredded to pieces, in the few seconds before Joe has wrenched the wheel and drifted the APC, tires squalling, right up the ramp.

August will get right back in the APC as soon as he gets this fence started. And hey, it lights up spectacularly, so he makes to swing back in right as Joe peels out, nearly goes flying off the back into the handful of xenos that made it into the compound. He scrambles for the handholds, dragging himself back in even as he gets a really good look at these beefamorphs. Ugh. He's not going to be able to eat bison for months.

He doesn't sit down and strap in, though. He wants to be ready to get to a window, immediately. "Gonna try to take out the building once we're airborne," he tells Ruiz, maybe to keep him from yelling about sitting down.

De la Vega looks about ready to clamber back out and haul August in with his own bare hands, he doesn't- oh, there he goes, finally. A couple of potshots are taken for covering fire, but he fails to hit anything of import.

Then punch it, princess goes up from one of his men, and he whacks the guy across the back of the head with his rifle's stock. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood, but not to render him unconscious; he needs him able to fight. The faceless Marine's helmet's grasped, and his head hauled back at a positively uncomfortable angle. "You fucking call him that again, I'll knock your teeth in," he spits, then shoves him forward again roughly. Clearly, there's only one person who gets to call Cavanaugh a princess. And he's it.

He grabs for the handle above him again as the APC goes into a tire-squealing drift, and he lets out a low, appreciative whistle. "How you doing?" he murmurs to Itzhak once he's able to speak again, nudging him gently with a shoulder. Roen, for now, is left to his own devices, while the rest of the Marines are barked orders for their imminent egress back onto the waiting Patusan.

The APC ends up slotted neatly right into the proper place in the dropship's bay, rocking up and then back on her wheels. Even as she's settling, Joe's slinging himself free of the driver's seat and hurling himself into the Typhoon's pilot's chair. Totally justified in leaving her trembling and ready to leap up into atmosphere - he pats the panel once, as if to reassure a nervous horse.

He's in that glorious zen state where he's not really a conscious being at all. He's just eyes and reflexes and hands, an integral part of the machine, another component like engines and fuselage and gauges. "We can do a quick turn, if you wanna play door gunner, but then we're sealing up and leaving atmosphere," he informs August, in a voice so flat it almost sounds bored. Which dullness is belied by the frankly maniacal gleam in his eyes. Some part of him is still having the time of his life.

And even as he's speaking, he's suiting action to word. The Typhoon heads straight up - a high-G ascent, as fast as he dares with those ailing engines. But they've got to get beyond the leaping range of any of the beefamorphs before they latch on.

The Marine Ruiz clocked yowls. "AUGH, fuckin' HELL, Gunny!" Ruiz gets the distinct impression he's glared at, although it's impossible to focus on the Marine's face. But also the distinct impression he's put them in their place. He's alpha wolf here.

Bates wasn't kidding when he said the fence had one jolt left in it. It lights up for about five seconds before going dark. Xenomorphs swarm up it, indeed spring for Typhoon, able to jump horribly high. It's like watching a rodeo bucking bull launch himself ten feet straight up, except with the appropriate exponential increase. Snarling writhing shapes fly, but only one of them gets a claw around one of the dropship's wings--and, peeling metal away in thin strips, it falls away.

Into the bellowing herd of bison. Eyes mad, foam flying from their muzzles, hooves churning, they collide into the swam, crushing them against the fence. No longer able to repel the animals with electricity, the fence, as massively built as it is, slowly keels over. The pressure is immense, as hundreds of animals with hundreds more behind them pile in.

Now you now why the xenos don't like the ground shaking.

August reaches out for the grand house, and finds it practically leaps into his will. It's easy. It's so easy to crack the foundations, topple the graceful white pillars. Load bearing walls blow out, until the roof drops, pancaking floor after floor with an awful and tremendous noise. He may be faded, but he is more than enough of an Artist for this. The mansion crumbles beneath him, like the Tower of Babel.

Itzhak's voice breaks, and for a moment he experiences what all musicians dread: going dry. Then Ruiz nudges him, and he cracks an eye to look at him. "Lemme know when we get home," he rasps. "I'm gonna throw up."

August's Dream self knows all about this building, what spots to compromise so that its own weight does the work for him. He sets down entropy into every last one of those most important locations, and like any large building built wrong, its own weight and gravity do the heavy lifting. Or dropping, in this case.

This is why he's never been able to call it 'mending', and though maybe he's not totally right about that--just because a doctor knows full well how to kill someone doesn't mean they do--he is, for once, not filled with regret over willing something to tear itself apart. He's burying the Dream's attempt to fuck with their heads using Joe's face. And a whole lot of eggs, but that's a bonus.

Something knotted up in him comes loose. He glows a little brighter, now; a little bit of his strength reclaimed. He sags against the drop ship's fuselage, letting the gravity of their ascent hold him in place. Unwise, but whatever. He has to think about how they're going to get that thing out of Itzhak.

Ruiz has done what he can for the time being. He's woven his Art, and bound the xenomorph slumbering inside his lover as surely as if he'd done so with rope or piano wire. A fierce look is sent to the hazel-eyed man, a quick nod; and instead of a kiss, he knocks foreheads with the man for a moment. Breath in, breath out, and then he shifts to clamber over Itzhak's lap and out of the APC once they're docked.

"Nice fucking work," he grunts to August after surveying the damage the other man has done to the compound, as the ground spirals away from them and details turn to a greying smudge against the dreamscape. He cuts a brief glance Cavanaugh's way, as if to make sure he's still got his head in the game, then starts prowling off to check on the rest of his 'men'. "And I'll take the door gun," he tells Joe on his way back, unslinging his rifle and grasping the handle above the gunner's seat to haul himself into place. "Roen needs to conserve his energy for something more important." A glance back at Itzhak's slumped form, brows furrowed.

They're up in orbit and signalling to the Patusan....and noting what they carry. "We're not landing on the ship until I'm sure Rosencrantz is the only one knocked up," he says, bluntly. "One we can handle. Not a ....pack. Bunch. Whatever the fuck the collective noun for these things is. We also gotta give the medical team time to get ready. We may need to use cryo."

There's no warmth in his expression - without the lines of good humor that his life has left him by that tail end of middle-age, his features are a lot more stern by default. The look in his eyes is only half the Cavanaugh they know, too. Like he's deeply submerged in this.

August gives Ruiz an up-nod of thanks. His eyes drift to Itzhak at the comment about conserving his energy, and he grimaces. What do they do--does Itzhak have a Company contact on board? Maybe a whole Company team, shady surgeons included?

Things he'll ask once they're docked. He grunts at Joe, pulls out the little device and climbs to his feet. It only takes a second for him to scan both of them. "You're both clean." He shuts it off, moves to sit near Itzhak until they land.

"Don't freeze me." Itzhak mumbles it to Ruiz, as he bumps their foreheads gently together. "You can't let her get into the hands of R&D." Revivifying some, he looks at Ruiz, his gray hazel eyes fierce, then up at August. "You have to kill her. It's...not hard, actually. Not when they're incubating." He flattens a palm against his chest. "You gotta kill her first. If you cut me open, she'll wake up. Harm to the host triggers 'em. Like a drowning reflex, when you breathe water because at that point if you don't breathe you're gonna die, but if you do breathe, maybe there's air." He pauses, taking a deep breath himself. "I know how to do it. I can do it via injection. Then you can crack my ribcage, take her out."

He smiles, daring, like he's on stage, and rakes his fingers through his hair. "Easy, right?"

No response to that. Don't freeze me. No response to Joe, either, when he mentions cryo. This place is getting into their fucking heads, and he refuses to let it. The railgun assembly is locked into place, shoulders rolled out, gloved hand closed around the grip as he tries to familiarise himself with the controls. "Not letting you die," he tells Itzhak, firmly. A hard look's sent to August, and then he resumes his fiddling with the gun. "Going to need more rounds for this bad boy, Roen," he calls across to the combat engineer on second thoughts, after checking the magazine.

Once he's gotten the go-ahead, he settles the Typhoon in her cradle far more sedately than he slung the APC into the dropship. He lets the faceless Marines of the Patusan's understrength little compliment out first - only once he's gone through the post-landing checklist does he finally pry himself out of his seat. Pride demands that he not let the fact that post-adrenaline has turned his legs to jelly be evident, so he walks with a kind of glass-fragile care, losing color.

August flicks a glance at Joe at the suggestion of cryo, frowns. It's probably not the worst idea, but Itzhak vetos it, so now he doesn't have to worry about the implications of Itzhak being stuck in a Dream in cryostasis.

He listens to Itzhak, expression bleak. Just (just! just) cut him open, crack his ribs, yank out the dead queen, and heal him back up. Sure. Okay. He's got this. (He's nauseated just thinking about it, so he stops.)

"Right," he mutters, looking away. Then Ruiz is giving him something to do, thank God. He reaches out, grips Itzhak's shoulder, and goes to do it. Hauling ammo around is very chop-wood-carry-water, and that's what he needs right now.

To be totally fair, Itzhak started with this place in his head, and in his chest cavity. The longer the Dream goes, the less he's able to remember that he's a fiddler and a mechanic, not a high-ranking xenobiologist who somehow...implanted himself with a queen? Did he? Or was it an accident?

If their objective was Bates, now ground to meat along with his queen under the remains of his house, why hasn't the Dream ended?

When Ruiz informs Itzhak he's not going to let him die, Itzhak smiles at him. This smile is real, sweet and brilliant. "I know you're not. I ain't even moved in yet. How can I die now? I just got here. I plan on spendin' a whole lotta years with you, krasavets." At least he remembers that much.

The Marines disembark, carrying out their wounded. They've left dead on the planet below, and they are angry and grieving.

Patusan doesn't have a huge amount of people, but there's one person there, who has a face. A woman with brown hair wrapped in a bun, she's hovering anxiously trying to get past all the Marines.

"Dr. Rosencrantz! Excuse me! Excuse me, let me by please, I need to talk to Dr. Rosencrantz immediately."

Why, indeed? De la Vega's wondering that very thing, perhaps. Why they're still here, trapped in this stark world instead of picking themselves up wherever they left off back in Gray Harbour, once that compound falls and Bates ceases to be. They must have some other purpose here.

He's one of the last to climb out, head ducked under the lip of the overhang, goggles tugged off and looped around his neck as he clambers off the ramp and onto the deck of the Patusan with a clang of boots. He finds Itzhak easily in the movement of bodies shifting to and fro, catches him by the arm in a grip like iron. There's care, affection even in his dark eyes; but also no question whatsoever that he's not letting him go anywhere under his own power at the moment. Try as he might, the dream's infecting his mind, too. "Get the Typhoon scrubbed and ready to head back up," he's telling the head technician, who looks between him and Joe for orders. Technically his command ends now that they're back on board the mothership, but de la Vega's a bossy son of a bitch who doesn't mind throwing his weight around.

The woman with the bun pushing toward them gets a sidearm drawn and cocked and a, "Who the fuck are you?"

August, on the other hand, is among the first out, mostly because he wants to get a look at their surroundings. He's wary; this Dream is still going, and that has him on edge. It doesn't help that Itzhak still has that thing in him too. (A thing which loves him deeply and which they're about to kill, and that's going to bother August for a long fucking time as much as he wants to think otherwise.)

So when he hears the voice and turns, he stops dead. They wouldn't, right? They can't. She has no Glimmer. So--

Ruiz drawing his gun is what gets August back into motion; he jerks in surprise, and acts on reflex, ordering the gun to stop being a gun and start being a pile of gun parts all over the floor of the carrier.

Joe's already giving the nod to the tech, having been last out of the Typhoon. The pilot's got the sweat of adrenaline all over his face, for all that the bay is cold and dry and a bit dusty, but his posture is still upright.

That flicker of power in use has him peering over, though, brows lofting....and then the sidearm's just falling apart like a broken toy. He doesn't go for his own, or for the carbine still bumping at his hip like a purse. "Ma'am," he says, in that slow drawl, "Rosencrantz is infected. We need containment, and you need to step back."

The woman, trying to shove between burly Marines, makes a tiny squeak of terror in her throat and freezes when Ruiz pulls his sidearm on her. Her hands fly up. "Uhm?" she says, and looks at Itzhak. Who, his arm in the other man's grip, is staring at her.

"Naomi?" he says, voice wavering. Oh God. Please don't let her really be here, please let her be a dream construct like Bates. And he sure doesn't want to tell Javier it's okay when it really, really might not be okay...

Then August makes Ruiz's gun fall apart. Itzhak groans. "If youse guys start fighting I swear to Christ I'm gonna lose my shit right here," he warns.

The woman, petite and brunette and lovely, looks at Joe with a weird expression. Like she's not sure why he's telling her that. Then, back at Itzhak. "Dr. Rosencrantz, I need to talk to you, right now, please."

While all that is happening, two other figures are approaching. One of them is the captain. The other is another Company man, and although these two figures have the same impossible-to-examine looks as the Marines and the ship crew scurrying about, the Company man is pissed.

"Where's Bates?" he (may as well call it a he) demands of Joe. Joe's the ranking officer in this sorry bunch. The captain hangs back in a lurksome manner, like someone who doesn't want to be the one getting yelled at.

One moment, de la Vega's in control of the situation. Inasmuch as he can be, given the givens. But the next moment, his gun is breaking apart in his fingers like a toy made from unfired clay. Crumbling to pieces, sifting between his fingers, some of them still hot, and he pulls his hand back sharply. And cuts a hard, dark look immediately to Roen. His other hand still gripping Itzhak's arm hard enough to bruise it, there's a beat where he clearly considers shoving the taller man away, prowling on over, and putting his fist right in the combat engineer's face and starting a brawl right on this here deck. But Itzhak's appeal to his common sense seems to dilute some of his ill temper, and he merely bares his teeth briefly at the other man before turning back to Naomi.

He'll let Cavanaugh answer the question that was asked of him, though; he knows how rank works, and he's got no intention of speaking out of turn. Now? He's just a slightly less armed-to-the-teeth brute. Though he does still have that nasty sniper rifle slung across his shoulder. So take that, Roen.

August comes this close to making some sort of pithy comment when Ruiz gives him that look, but Itzhak's voice brings him back into the moment. He sags, gives Ruiz an apologetic smile and a half-hearted shrug. He's not all that sorry, though, and anyone with two eyes can tell.

He half turns as the Company man approaches, makes a face and moves to join Joe. Maybe between the two of them they can make enough shit up that they can get him to fuck off?

Joe turns that look on him. Not one the amiable sailor of latter days ever wears, but Ruiz has seen it before - hauteur concealed by just enough of a veneer of impassivity to keep him from getting slapped either literally or figuratively. He may not know this faceless goon's name, but he knows what he is. "Bates was infected as well and died of his wounds when the xenomorph he was gestating attempted to hatch." No an iota of apology or regret in his tone. "The planet below has a massive infestation, mostly hosted in free-range buffalo hybrids. There were no other human survivors detected."

The woman not listening to him has him faintly nettled....and then he's looking to de la Vega, as if he's braced for an explosion of violence. No attempt to keep her away from Itzhak. She's got real, distinct features. She's someone else, not a mere NPC.

"Unacceptable, Lieutenant," the goon says, in the tone of a man pushed beyond his limit. "Un. Acceptable!" He points at Itzhak, furiously. "You were supposed to make sure that didn't happen, Rosencrantz!"

Itzhak, who is bearing Ruiz's pressure on his arm without complaint (for once), curls his lip at the Company man in a sneer. "Yeah, well, it happened, so suck my dick about it. Get outta my fuckin' way, I got shit to do."

That inspires a ripple of bitter amusement from the Marines still working to get things squared away, but the Company man isn't laughing.

"I'm gonna have your head for this," he promises Itzhak. "You and your pet thugs." He glares at Joe and Ruiz and August. In the way of dreams, they can feel his anger as if it was their own, burning under the breastbone like acid blood. "This is the end of ALL your careers."

In the background, the captain sighs, like they could only wish that would happen.

The woman, Naomi? dares to slip to Itzhak's side opposite from Ruiz. She's considerably shorter than him, so she grabs his shoulder and pulls him down and stands on her toes to hiss urgently in his ear. He listens. "...That sounds bad," he says conversationally, but his eyebrows are at maximum height.

"It's very, very, very bad, let's go, please, NOW." Naomi beckons the men to follow her, but the goon grabs her.

"No you don't, I want an accounting of exactly what went wrong down there!"

To de la Vega's credit, he keeps his goddamned mouth shut during that whole fucking tirade. He doesn't leap in and start swinging, and reinforce the Company man's presumption (or the captain's, for that matter) that he's a simple, vicious brute of a Marine whose sole job is to kill as many bugs as he can before he dies. No, he hangs back with his hand on Rosencrantz's arm and that set to his shoulders and that look in his eyes like he wants to start shit, but he's not going to.

Until that little exchange takes place between Naomi and Itzhak, and the goon continues to be, well, a goon about it. And de la Vega seems to decide that enough is enough. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't do a damned thing. Simply gazes steadily at the guy until he manages to catch his eye, and then a funny thing happens; the Marine in the black BDUs with the sniper rifle strapped to his back is instantaneously become something else entirely. Something utterly terrifying. A twenty foot tall scorpion, or a guillotine about to drop, or a swarm of chittering locusts pouring in from the ceiling.

August watches the guy rant, and rant, and rant. And God, he's used to this kind of high-handed, entitled bullshit, and normally he could weather it like any other temper tantrum.

This is anything but normal. He's at the end of his rope. When the dude grabs Naomi August is prepping to make him regret it, but Ruiz gets there first. August watches that tidal wave of fear roll out and holds back, poised, ready. Waiting to see what's going to happen. Because if the guy makes a move for a weapon he's going to find himself on the floor of the carrier, and it's six to one and pickin' em if he'll be alive.

Apparently this goon is not in the least aware that no one gets assigned to the Patusan as a reward. Far from it. There's another of those Joe expressions - the lazy droop of lids, the way his mouth thins out, like he's bored. But Ruiz, at least, knows that this usually presages him unleashing some viciously insolent reply. De la Vega's little mental sleight of hand saves the rags of this fictional career, for before he can really dig in, this Company fool is losing it entirely.

Joe merely watches, unruffled, and then turns away to attend to Itzhak. The Princess is not amused. It seems he doesn't class himself among the pet thugs, even if he himself has a lap Marine.

"Don't you fucking touch her!" Itzhak snarls, lunging for the guy. Naomi herself yanks her arm out of the goon's grip, getting out of reach with sudden swift grace that apparently she and Itzhak have in common, a way of turning as molten as a cat that doesn't want to be picked up.

But before he can land fist first in the Company man's face, the Company man screams.

"NO!" He covers his face with one hand, wild staring eyes visible between his fingers. The other hand is pushed out towards Ruiz in an instinct to keep him away. "No, oh God, no! PLEASE NO!" Tears spring from those maddened eyes with the velocity of a hose.

Itzhak, surprised as hell, hesitates. Ruiz, and Joe and August for that matter, can tell the Company guy's been kicked in the brain. Ruiz came down on him like the fist of the divine.

"What the fuck's wrong with him," one of the Marines says in a mystified tone.

One of the others snickers. "Gunny just looked at him." That's their Gunny, making Company men cry with a look.

The man screams. And screams. And convulses. His screams grow choked, desperate, as something grows out of his chest, a tall spike of red. It's as if he's giving birth to a xeno, the way he thrashes and gurgles, the way chitin shoves out of his ribcage. Then he lifts into the air, impaled on the spike, and then he is flung across the hangar to land in a crumpled bloody heap.

A xeno, large as a queen, descends from the ceiling. It lands with a terrific thump on the deckplates as people yell and scatter. Unlike the bison xenos, this one is sleek and lithe as a panther, its royal crest a tangle of swept-back horns. Xenos come in one color--black--but this one has stockings, like a horse, although in red.

"It's him," Naomi whispers, and looks at Itzhak, her face pale with fear. She expects him to handle the situation. She's not even running.

Seeing Cavanaugh easing in closer, reaching for Itzhak, de la Vega releases him to the pilot with an unreadable look angled toward the pair. Then he cuts his gaze back to the Company man, whose fear starts to ramp up a few notches. Terror turns to actual pain, and pain turns to death throes as something that's nothing to do with anything he fabricated, rises up out of the floor and impales him in a bloody crackle of bone and sinew and severed spinal cord.

The Marine's already drawing his rifle and sweeping the other men back with an arm held out and a vociferous, commanding bark. He doesn't fire yet, but the weapon wakes up with a low whine of its power cell coming online as he trains his sights on the sleek xenomorph's head. "It wants to keep the queen safe," he informs the others in a low growl. "And kill us." Of course. "Options?"

August allows himself a little grim satisfaction as Ruiz's power does its work. He shifts towards the rest of the group, slows to a stop when he realizes the guy is having some kind of seizure.

Or, no--just having some kind of alien.

"What the Christ," he mutters. He moves the rest of the way to Ruiz's side much quicker now. "Think you could keep it busy with an illusion? We need to get her out of Itzhak." At which point August imagines the thing will go crazy, but one crisis at a time. "Then we can see about chucking it out into space."

He's close enough that he gets spattered by some of it, only blinking. But it's only human (only human) blood. Joe's still in that insulated state, somewhere beyond in that transcendent high that even mundane pain only approaches, that he hasn't felt since launch and combat. "Can we kill it before it gets once of us?" he asks. "We can do just like in the movie, punch a hole in the hull, but....if we're operating on movie physics, we'll be fucked, too. Unless we can get back in the dropship and do it that way." Marooned in space, that'll be great. Then his gaze slides inexorably to Itzhak. "If he's a warrior for her.....how the fuck did he get on here? Are there more queens aboard? More warriors? We may have to vent the whole fucking ship."

Then, quietly, "I'll keep it busy. I can distract it. Keep them from firing, though. He'll panic - keep her happy."

"He's not a warrior," Naomi says. "He's a king."

Itzhak claps both hands over his sternum, dropping to his knees, curling over gasping. Naomi bolts to his side. "Suppressant," he grits out.

"Where is it?" Frantic, Naomi searches that many-pocketed vest he's wearing.

Sweating in pain and panic, Itzhak can barely get out, "...pocket..."

"Which pocket, Itzhak?!"

"What are your orders, sir?" barks a Marine. Those still on their feet have grabbed their weapons, every muzzle pointing at the king.

"Don't blow a fucking hole in the ship!" the captain roars, but even they have drawn their sidearm. It's the devil or the deep blue sea now.

The king is studying, eyelessly, the three men around Itzhak, and Naomi. He prowls back and forth, enormous, gracile, claws ticking on the deckplate, his barbed tail hovering poised over his back like a scorpion's. He seems to be well aware that he is in complete command here.

Coming to some decision, he rears, towering over Itzhak, and opens his jaws in a threat display. Pharyngeal jaws emerge. Hsssssssssssss. Nobody needs to be a mind reader to know that that means 'get away from my queen'.

Not a warrior. A king. For a queen, as is only right, needs a king. Or is it that a king needs a queen? They complete one another, and these useless human meatbags are simply standing in the way of all that right now. What are your orders, sir? and this is no longer de la Vega's command. No longer his orders to give, or his men to lead. He's no sir, besides, but just a working man like the rest of them. Some filthy Tijuana street rat who knew how to hold a gun and shoot a gun and here he is, isn't he?

"Help Roen get that thing out of him," he tells Joe, dark eyes cutting to blue, imploring him for a beat or two. And then, swallowing, he backs up a couple of steps, rifle still trained on the beast's frilled head. "And then give us a hand with shoving this hijo de puta out an airlock."

He gives no indication whatsoever what his plan might be, beyond a brief little mental nudge to August requesting help, and then - assuming it's provided - a surge of his power focused on one goal, and one goal alone: to make the xenomorph believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that de la Vega is the one harbouring the sleeping queen. Can he smell her, feel her heat radiating off the human meatbag? Hear the rasp of her breathing?

August watches the King tower over them, sets his teeth. "Yeah well I didn't vote for him." He feels that request, answers immediately with a flex one hand and a surge of power. "Make that count," he says, voice low, and starts to edge towards Itzhak and Naomi, hoping to help find the suppressant so they can get Itzhak to medical.

We're going to convince this bastard to stuff himself into an airlock. Right. Joe just nods, at that. And the inner door of the lock starts to grind open, of its own accord. His gaze never wavers from that eyeless head.....and Joe himself is otherwise utterly still. As if it might not notice him

Naomi finds a syringe, and with perfectly steady hands yanks Itzhak's collar aside and plunges the needle straight down the gap between the side of his neck and his collarbone. He lets out an awful tearing grunt of pain.

"More," he rasps.

"What?" Naomi says, leaning back, trying to see his face, her own face drawn and white.

"More. Kill her. We got to kill her." He paws for another syringe.

"Kill her--but Solomon--"

Itzhak's gaze snaps to August. "Roen. Help me." Naomi, perhaps, can't be relied upon to help destroy his life's work.

But August can.

The king, Solomon, lets out another low hiss. Clear, thick goo drips from his paired jaws. Then he falls silent. He turns his head, at the bottom of that crown of horns. No longer does he 'look' at Itzhak. Now, he looks at Ruiz.

He's a little confused, even so. Ruiz can feel that he is very familiar with Itzhak, as familiar as Lemondrop is with the scent and sound of the man. And he's certain that that male mammal in particular is his queen's beloved host.

He's pretty sure. But...no. No, he was wrong. The queen, her sweet tiny form coiled around the end of the windpipe, snug amidst heart and lungs, is in this other human. Yes. Yes, he senses her now, can hear the rush of acid through her veins.

Solomon slowly drops to all fours, his blind attention following Ruiz. One great clawed foot after another, he steps towards him.

Convince this bastard to stuff himself into an airlock.. or Ruiz plans on simply stuffing himself inside it, to save the others. It's the sort of asinine thing he'd do.

"Vamos bebé, vamos ahora," he's murmuring in a ridiculously soft, husky-warm croon. "Ven conmigo. Fácil ahora, fácil, bomboncita." A flick of dark eyes to Joe, and he holds the pilot's gaze as he continues to back up toward the airlock, rifle still trained on the xenomorph. His men crowd in around them, behind them, bristling with weaponry, waiting for the order to shoot.

August flicks a bit of help Joe's way, making it easier to push past the faded nature of his Glimmer. And since Ruiz and Joe are a bit busy doing these Extremely Important Things, August takes the tense moment to say, "Hold your fire. Don't shoot at it. You'll just piss it off and get acid on everyone." He keeps his voice firm and steady, letting it carry without shouting. And despite what he's said, he keeps his eyes on the xeno the whole time, ready to chop off a few limbs if needed.

Until Itzhak asks for his help. So, they're doing this here. Okay. He reaches over and shoves the plunger down the rest of the way, without hesitation. They don't have time now; he suspects the second the queen dies, King Crimson here is going to lose his fucking mind.

"Javier," Joe's voice is not a shout or a scream, but it's pitched to carry, a parade-ground bark. "There are two suits in the 'lock. Put one on." He knows, somehow, that they're there. Conestoga-class always have them, says the part of his brain that's a very different Joe Cavanaugh. The one that flies Cheyennes over alien worlds, not Tomcats and Hornets over terrestrial seas. Knows that with movie logic, they can be donned in moments, as opposed to the long and painstaking process of putting on a NASA/ESA pressure suit.

"Oxygen flow is the red button. Key it the moment you get in."

"Oh my God," the captain murmurs. That thug of a gunnery sargeant is leading the alien king to his death.

Possibly both their deaths.

"Hold your fire!" comes the crisp echo from the Marines. They inch along after Solomon, every one of them keyed up like madmen.

Just like Joe said, there's a pair of pressure suits in the airlock, lying in translucent white plastic.

Itzhak wheezes out when August pushes the rest of the medicine into him, and he doesn't, really, breathe back in. A little. Only a little. His lips begin to tint a delicate shade of blue.

"Stop it," Naomi hisses, fierce as a queen. "You're going to kill him!" She doesn't interfere, though, because Itzhak is nodding.

"More," he gasps, and, "don't...let him...jump out...too...."

Solomon prowls after Ruiz, with every evidence of being completely under his spell. His queen is in there. Nothing else matters. Not the sweating mammals with their metal toys, not his creator starting the process of asphyxiating on the deck. Only his bride-to-be, safely locked in that ribcage.

That thug of a gunnery sergeant isn't about to belay the order to hold fire, and his men seem like they'd follow him through the gates of hell itself; if he's standing down, so will they.

A computerised female voice somewhere in the background: oxygen saturation is at.. eighty six percent and dropping

Cavanaugh's voice cuts through the static of his his swimming, pounding head; he can barely think straight with the effort to keep this illusion up. Blood trickles from his mouth, from his ear, and he coughs a couple of a times as he backs into the airlock proper, darts his eyes away to find the suit that's mentioned. There it is, in translucent white plastic. He has to set his rifle down and power it off, in order to pull the thing on. But it's not like he's going to be needing that thing where he's going, anyway.

Thump as the button's hit, and a chime goes off, and the oxygen warning's canceled as the sensor's bar starts to climb again. The airlock door, meanwhile, continues to grind open.

August doesn't dare look back at what's going on with Joe and Ruiz and King Crimson; he'll just freak out and do something stupid, with how this Dream has been going. He stays focused on Itzhak, even when he hears that warning, feels de la Vega teetering close to blacking out.

"He's not dying while I'm still alive," he says to Naomi, eyes on Itzhak's. He keeps pressing the plunger in, hauls Itzhak's vitals out of the black hole they're falling into. "Not you," he says. "Just her." He sets his other hand on Itzhak's neck reassuringly. "Hang on. Almost got her. Stay with me." He manages a morbid laugh. "You think Cavanaugh is letting de la Vega jump out of that airlock? Please."

See, the thing is....Joe is doing exactly that. He watches the inner hatch close, locking Solomon and the be-suited Ruiz away from the sight of those still in the ship. There's a terrible finality to the doors clanking shut, cutting off the sight of both xeno and Marine.

Then the rapid series of thumps, bumps, and the gale-force blast of an emergency cycle dropping the pressure so fast that the 'lock's contents are whirled away from the ship's hull like leaves in an autumn storm.

Ruiz is treated, if that's the word, to the sight of the world below them, cloud-veiled. Glimpses of the local sun on shimmering seas, of golden plains stretching off to the arc of the terminator, where a distant supercell storm flashes and sparks silently - all of it seen in rapid flashes as he tumbles away.

"Letting?" Itzhak wheezes a breathless laugh. Even suffocating because his lungs don't feel like doing their job anymore, he can put a wealth of Yiddish inflection in that one word.

Oh no, he doesn't think Joe is going to let de la Vega jump out an airlock. He thinks Joe won't be able to stop him.

Probably because he doesn't know about the pressure suits. He's busy slowly keeling over, his skin going blue. Inside his chest, the dying queen twitches, spasms, like the universe's worst case of heartburn.

Naomi slaps him briskly. "Stay awake," she orders him, her voice stern although there's tears in her eyes. "Itzil! Look at me!"

"Brat," Itzhak mumbles.

August shoves health into him, forcing his lungs to work, jumpstarting all his RBC into exhanging oxygen like crazy little motherfuckers. Itzhak gasps in a huge breath, color flushing him from his scalp down into the collar of his shirt.

Within him, the queen dies.

Within the airlock, Solomon lowers his fantastic head to breathe against Ruiz's helmet. Feathery tendrils of steam flicker out over the plastic. He seems...content. He has his queen.

The airlock opens and he goes berserk. Merciless vacuum sucks him into space, but he's not going without his queen. Flailing, screaming, he gets one claw hooked around Ruiz's leg and now this is an extremely bumpy ride, attached to a murderous alien king.

Itzhak certainly has enough breath to yell, "JAVELEH!" as Joe blows the airlock. His glimmer surges, barely half its usual strength, and he reaches and--nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

And Javier, ferocious to the bitter fucking end, betrays his sheer terror in meeting it face to face with only a single word mouthed frantically against the faceplate of his suit. A word, unfortunately, that nobody'll ever know, because there's no radio hookup or audio line patched into the ship's comms. His breath fogs the plastic, dark eyes slivered with fear, and then resolve, in the instant before the bay door finishes opening, decompression completes, and he's dragged out into the vacuum of space. He and the xenomorph, tangled together at the last second; a claw slices into his leg, and in space, nobody can hear you scream. He struggles, twists and writhes and takes a few wild swings at the creature as they hurtle away from the ship. How long until it suffocates? How long until he does?

August feels that second life force peter out, can't help a small sigh. "Sorry honey. Wish there was another way." He pulls the syringe out, winces against Itzhak yelling Ruiz's name in his ear. He should be able to grab de la Vega and Cavanaugh if August can just get him healthy. Right? Right. He hopes.

Well, there's one obvious way to do it. Resorption is a thing. (He dated a Zoology post doc who talked all about it. Over dinner. At least he was cute.) Less surgery. Also, he might not pass out. And fortunately, the queen is a lot of chitinous material, easy stuff for him to work with. He neutralizes the acid, guides it back to water; slowly devolves things into smaller things, and smaller ones, until there's nothing left of her except the weird placement of Itzhak's organs as they try to sort out where to go.

August sags back onto his heels, panting. "Get them back in here," he says, wiping his sweat-covered face.

The duality is painful. The real world spacefarer he was, versus this world's version. The pair of lives fighting it out, memories trying to overwrite memories - but here, for a moment, they're in a weirdly sweet accord.

For even as the lock is cycling back, and August is reducing the infant queen to her component molecules, Joe is moving like he finally knows what he's for. The moment the inner doors are wide enough he's in, scrambling into the suit with a haste that'd be spastically comical if it weren't in deadly earnest. A last hiss of escaping air as he locks the helmet, then he's slamming a hand down on the emergency cycle control.

He's blown out with a fraction of the previous explosive force....but he's rolling with it, neat as an otter tumbling in a stream. Coming up, and then heading for the pair struggling in the shadow of oncoming night. He knows how to maneuver, knowledge courtesy of that younger, unmarred self. And moments, a gloved hand is seizing Javier's, all the better to turn him and slap a patch over the leak.

Solomon is screaming, too. Writhing, he lashes at Ruiz with his tail, slashes at him with his claws, screeches insanity. Ruiz is battered in his grip as the two of them spiral helplessly towards 51 Pegasi.

As the fetal queen's acid blood is neutralized, her chitin spikes eroded away, her form dissolved into harmless components, Itzhak hauls in the deepest breath yet. And maybe that breath comes back out as a sob, maybe the water that was xenomorph blood provides the fluid for tears that wet his lashes. His hands on his breastbone clench into fists.

Then his glimmer explodes, silent, invisible, immense as a solar flare hanging in space. August has freed him, and freed his power. He lifts his head, staring at the airlock.

"I gotcha, baby," he gets out, through weeping. In his head, Vivaldi.

From the deck of Patusan, he reaches out and unhooks Ruiz's pressure suit from the crazed alien king, casual as if he pulled a sweater off a coathook. Then he catches him, stops him from spinning, bleeding away angular momentum while Joe rockets towards him.

Solomon falls away, a fish cruelly tossed on land to thrash and expire. He falls, falls, falls, screaming, twisting impotently. Even xenos need air. Even xenos cannot re-enter atmosphere. Soon enough, he'll be a streak of fire in 51 Pegasi's sky for the bison herds to ignore.

Naomi looks at Itzhak, then August. She has no idea what to make of what just happened. Neither does the captain or the crew or the Marines. "Who are you," she says to August, her voice strained. "What have you done?"

Beasts, both of them, though only one of them with sins that can be enumerated. Solomon has done no evil, truly; he's simply wrought what he was made to. The continuation of his species and bloodline, the destruction of all that stands in its way. De la Vega, on the other hand, the things he's done-

The xenomorph is ripped away from him with a suddenness and a force like hitting the ground before his chute's opened. He's yanked back from the inexorable pull and wheel of gravity, his spacesuit flayed open along his thigh in a jagged tear, alarms bleating into his ear about alert, alert, oxygen levels critical and blood pooling and beading and drifting off into the black as he floats there suspended. Waiting.

August watches Itzhak work, a bit too dazed to do much of anything else. He blinks at Naomi, a little confused by the question. "Saved him from being torn apart birthing that thing." He coughs a laugh. "I'm just some botanist. But you're fucking welcome." He doesn't bother trying to get up, just stays where he is. He's pretty sure if he moves he'll dry heave. So, sitting is good.

And then there are deft hands on Ruiz, turning him. The glint of helmet lights raking over him. Without air between them to transmit sound, he can't hear the click of the tether's carabiner as Joe latches on, binding them together, or the streeeeeeeetch-rip sound of someone parceling out a length of duct tape and slapping it on....though that's exactly what Joe's doing with a handyman's brisk efficiency. Then, satisfied with his work, he's checking gauges on the chest panel, and reaching over to the arm of Ruiz's suit. He taps a few buttons, and the suit's radio crackles to life.

"Sorry about that," he says, though there is exactly no contrition in his voice. If anything, there's adrenaline-laced glee. He hasn't had this much fun since flight school.

The suit's alarms begin to calm down, as pressure and O2 levels begin to restore themselves.

Can Itzhak actually grab escaping oxygen, molecule by molecule, and hold it where it is, against vacuum? Normally, maybe he can't. Right now, you bet your tuchis he can, in the glory of his unleashed power. He can't touch Ruiz himself, and he's never mourned that more than this moment, but his Song can make gravity into his bitch.

"Everything we worked for," Naomi says. Outrage and relief war in her expression.

"Don't matter," Itzhak mutters. He lifts his tearstreaked face to August, looking up at him with the hero-worship he tries so hard to hide shining in his eyes. "It don't matter at all."

The captain is radioing over to the pressure-suited escapees. "Cavanaugh, de la Vega, do you copy??" They sound pretty concerned.

It takes Ruiz a minute to sort out what's actually happening. That he isn't, in fact, going to be flung into Pegasi's gravity well and burn up like a meteor in rapid re-entry, starved of oxygen and long-dead before that gruesome eventuality. That someone has hauled him out of gravity's clutches, and that someone else has their arms around him. Their hands on him. Taping up his suit, patching into his radio. Apologising.

It's a half a minute before the injured Marine, significantly less gleeful about this whole spacewalking business and looking about ten seconds away from hurling, responds with a crackle of static, "Like fuck you are, sir." He closes his eyes, leans against the pilot, and all he can think about is getting back to the Patusan as soon as humanly possible. "It's good to see you, too."

August gives Itzhak a sad, exhausted smile. "Maybe it does," he allows. He turns that same look on Naomi. He thinks a bit before responding to her. It's a Dream; will anything he says to this doppelganger of Itzhak's sister matter? Does this place just vanish when they're released. their efforts rendered null and void? He's not sure. But maybe it doesn't. Maybe they've just saved her brother so the two of them can escape this madness. So he says it anyways.

"You should think about why he was working for that. Working for something that'd just get him and a whole lot of other people killed." August has his ideas about why that is, but keeps them to himself. They're unlikely to find out. He reaches out, pats Itzhak on the shoulder. "They okay?"

Unlike in movies, the inside of the helmet is not illuminated. Javier can't see Joe's smile. But he doesn't need to - he can sense it. There's a tap of faceplate to faceplate, in lieu of a kiss. "Hush now, Gunny," he says, admonishing. "Otherwise all the other Marines will be wanting their turn out here, and we'll never get anything done."

He's on the radio, responding, reporting back to the ship in far more formal words. Ruiz is wounded, but stable. Then, gently, he's starting them back to the ship at a far more sedate pace than they left it. She's a shape in the darkness, though the local sun is starting to bring out the gunmetal highlights...and her running lights blink steadfastly, like lighthouses.

Itzhak closes his eyes, looking flatly exhausted. Still kneeling on the floor, he's slumped over like a pile of laundry. "If they ain't okay, I demand a fuckin' refund."

He hasn't paid a lot of attention to what August told Naomi...but Naomi has. She eyes August, wary. Beneath the wariness is a glint of hope. "I'll get stretchers," she says to Itzhak, kisses him on the top of his head among his black curls, and hurries off.

Is she his sister, Dreaming along with them, or is she like Bates?

As Joe and Ruiz gain the airlock again that they so precipitously left, everything begins to fade to black. This is it. The Dream letting them go.

Hush now, Cavanaugh says, and for once in his fucking life, de la Vega actually listens. He hushes. They're reeled back in to the ship, and it's a testament to how firmly this place has become entrenched in his consciousness that he's not thinking of home, when he sets foot in that airlock. He's not thinking of Gray Harbour at all. He's wondering whether Roen managed to get the queen out of his lover, and he's wondering whether Bates is Joe, or whether Joe is Bates, and he's wondering why Itzhak implanted that monster in him in the first place. Questions without answers, his arm slung around the taller pilot as he limps along with him once they're inside. Does he spare a lingering glance for that yawning expanse of black, as things start to tip sideways?

Well, maybe.

"Not sure They know about Mag-Moss, or anything along those lines." August rubs Itzhak's back, watches Naomi as she watches him. Is this what They wanted, to tease them with the vaguest notion that they'd altered the course of this Dream, only to poison it later upon return and find out they've made it worse?

It doesn't seem to matter; the Dream begins to fade. He tightens his hold on Itzhak even as darkness swallows them. "Fucking finally," he says. Just before it all goes black, a faint 'thump' as August finally gives himself leave to pass out, and his head hits the carrier floor.

Joe, though, has turned back to that burning sweep of sky. A world turning below him, the orbital sunrise coming up with the speed of Apollo's arrows - a reaching finger of sunlight strikes in to the airlock, putting the pallid local lights to shame. Spreads like a welcoming hand, striking through the filter of the faceplate, giving Javier a glimpse of his profile, eyes nearly closing. And as the Dream starts to fade, and he turns to Javier....the expression on his face is one of the bitterest loss.

Itzhak grunts a curse, grabbing August as he feels him begin to topple. "Ah goddammit, easy there big guy." He grapples with him, trying to let his weight hit the floor more gently. It's only kind of successful.

The bone-deep thrum of Patusan's engines fades, and the shouting of the Marines fades, and everything fades, this reality sinking away to let the usual one pour in. A quieter if not calmer reality, where cancer is more than an alien metaphor and space is as deadly as ever, and these four men have lives far from what the Dream assigned...

but not that far.