Marc Cerasini - AVP - Alien vs. Predator

When Miller didn’t respond instantly, Verheiden yelled, “Keep your hands off the hardware or you’ll be wearing your ass for a hat!”

Miller quickly scrambled out of the cab as Lex approached.

“Nice team spirit,” she said.

Verheiden looked at Lex, then at Maxwell Stafford.

“Keep the Beakers away from the gear,” he barked.

Max Stafford sighed. A meticulous organizer, he had worked long and hard to put this very expensive expedition together. The last thing he needed was a personality clash, which led to bruised egos and wasted energy. The endeavor they were about to embark upon was too important for either. He stepped between Miller and Verheiden’s team.

Verheiden turned his back on Lex and Miller and contemptuously surveyed the collection of overeducated, underdeveloped brainiacs milling around the hold, examining everything as if they were peering through electron microscopes.

“Just keep the goddamn Beakers away from my gear,” he snarled again.

This time Verheiden’s remark evoked applause, catcalls and derisive laughter from his own men and some of the roughnecks.

“What’s a Beaker?” Miller asked.

Lex crossed her arms. “It’s what they call scientists out here. You know… Beaker? Like in The Muppet Show?

Miller’s face lit up. “Beaker… I kinda like that.”

“The briefing is to start in five minutes,” said Max Stafford. “Please take your seats.”

Sebastian De Rosa found a place in the front row, close to the makeshift podium. As he sat down and crossed his legs, Thomas hurried across the hold to his side.

“Weyland’s check cleared.”

“Good,” said Sebastian. “We’re going to listen to whatever he has to say. We nod, we smile, and then we politely decline whatever offer he makes, take the money and head back to Mexico.”

Five minutes later, everyone in the mammoth hold was seated in folding chairs, grouped together by profession. The muscle—Verheiden, Sven, Mikkel, Boris, and Adele Rousseau—sat together in one clique; Quinn, Connors and the roughnecks in another. The third group was more casual and was comprised of the scientists and researchers from diverse disciplines that Charles Weyland had assembled from the four corners of the world.

Stafford noticed that Lex had aligned herself with them.

As an experienced leader of men, Max Stafford felt the tension rippling through the ship’s hold like charged particles before a lightning strike. Some of the heightened emotion was due to the team’s uncertainty about why they’d been brought here and what was expected of them. But once these people were made aware of the reasons for this voyage, uncertainty would be replaced by other emotions—scientific curiosity and the joy of discovery, perhaps, along with baser instincts like greed and ambition.

Forging such a diverse group into a functional and efficient team would be a challenge, Stafford decided as he stepped onto the makeshift platform. Then again, his job usually was.

“Everybody, please, your attention!” Stafford announced into the microphone. His amplified voice reverberated hollowly in the cavernous space.

“Most of you already know me, and I know all of you, by reputation if not yet personally. My name is Maxwell Stafford and I’ve been authorized by Mr. Weyland to assemble this team—”

Suddenly a pale hand fell on his shoulder. Max turned.

“Mr. Weyland,” he said, surprised.

“Thank you, Max. I’ll take it from here,” Charles Weyland replied. Stafford stepped back, and the billionaire leader of the mysterious expedition took center stage.

Though well into his fourth decade, not a trace of gray could be seen in his thick shock of black hair. With his broad, commanding forehead, wide mouth, piercing, ice-blue eyes, and sinewy frame, Charles Weyland looked more like a sports enthusiast than an industrialist—an illusion he fostered by appearing in public with a golf club slung over his shoulder. Waiting patiently for the murmurs of surprise and recognition to fade, Weyland twirled his nine iron once, then leaned on it with both hands.

“I hope you’ve all had a chance to freshen up, perhaps catch a little sleep,” he began. “I know some of you have just arrived, and all of you traveled a long way to be here, and at very short notice. Let me assure you, however, that your journey has not been in vain.”

The lights in the hold dimmed, and a digital projector illuminated a large square of the peeling metal bulkhead behind the platform. Weyland stood silhouetted in the light.

“Seven days ago one of my satellites over Antarctica was hunting for mineral deposits when a sudden heat bloom beneath the earth outlined this—”

The square of white light was replaced by a hazy, red-and-yellow-hued satellite image. Outlined in blood red on a background of pale yellow and burnt orange, a pattern of interlocking square shapes was clearly visible.

“This is a thermal image,” Weyland continued, gesturing with his nine iron. “The red lines indicate solid walls. The orange, solid rock. My experts tell me it’s a pyramid. What they can’t agree on is who built it and when….”

Sebastian De Rosa found his interest piqued for the first time since he’d arrived on the ship.

“What caused the heat bloom?” Thomas asked.

“We don’t know. But one expert tells me that this feature is reminiscent of the Aztecs….”

The image behind Weyland shifted angles.

“Another tells me that this is probably Cambodian….”

Yet another satellite image of the pyramid silhouette appeared on the wall over Weyland’s shoulder.

“But everyone agrees that the smooth side is definitively Egyptian.”

Thomas, an acclaimed Egyptologist, nodded in agreement.

“Why would anyone build a pyramid out here?” Miller asked.

“Ancient maps show Antarctica free of ice,” said Thomas, echoing his mentor Sebastian’s theories. “It’s likely that the continent was once habitable.”

Sebastian De Rosa rose and stepped closer to the image on the wall. Weyland’s penetrating blue eyes searched him out.

“Mr. De Rosa?”

“I think your experts are right.”

“Which one?”

Sebastian smiled. “All of them. The Egyptians, the Cambodians and the Aztecs all built pyramids. Three separate cultures that lived thousands of miles apart—”

“With no communication between them,” Thomas added.

“Yet what they built was almost identical.” Sebastian stepped right up to the wall and stared at the projection. “This is clearly a temple complex. A series of pyramids, probably, and there is the ceremonial road connecting them.”

Sebastian De Rosa’s words caused a ripple of excitement on the Beaker side of the room. Pausing for effect, Weyland swung his nine iron with one hand, then rested it on his shoulder.

Oblivious to the growing clamor, Sebastian remained focused on the projected image. “Almost identical,” he said again.

“Meaning what, exactly?” Lex asked.

“This might be the first pyramid ever built,” Sebastian replied.

Miller scratched his head. “Built by whom?”

It was Sebastian De Rosa who replied, in a voice that barely contained his growing excitement. “The master culture from which all others are derived,” he announced.

“If it could be the first pyramid, it could also be the last,” Weyland said. “An amalgam of the ones that came before it. There’s no proof of any connection between the cultures you cited.”

Sebastian shook his finger at the image. “This photo is the proof.”

Weyland smiled at Dr. De Rosa, somewhat condescendingly, Lex felt.

“I can’t tell you who built it,” said Miller, speaking up. “But if I could take a sample from it, I could tell you how old it is.”