The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume One (Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum, the Female War)

by Steve Perry

  “What the hell is that?” Renus asked.

  Peterson looked up at the ceiling.

  Renus and Magruder looked up, too.

  11

  The miracle of modern chemistry failed to put Billie to sleep. She added to the medicine the relaxation drill she’d learned in the hospital but after three rounds of pleading for her muscles to relax she was still awake. Mitch had gone, where she didn’t know. And she didn’t care.

  Right.

  Fuck this.

  Billie stood, exhausted but past the point where she could drop off. Washed her face and looked at herself in the small mirror over the basin. Her image stared back, hollow-eyed, her muscles taut with strain. When Wilks had broken her out of the hospital—so long ago it now seemed—her almost-ash hair had been shoulder length. The hair was still a pale-brown but she’d chopped it off short somewhere along the way. She couldn’t even remember when she’d done that. During one of the post-sleep lethargies. If there were an omnipotent god out there somewhere who paid attention to what people did, he must have one hell of a warped sense of humor.

  She dried her face under the blower, took a few deep breaths, and left the little room.

  Billie walked as though she were a passenger on her own shoulders, along for the ride but not in control. She observed almost distantly her feet taking her back to the communications room. Maybe seeing how other people dealt with monsters might help somehow. And she found herself worried about the little girl she’d seen, a child billions of kilometers and years away. What was her name? Amy?

  There must have been a shift change, a different tech was on the board when Billie arrived, a man this time. But he must have had his orders, too.

  “Annie said you were here earlier,” he said. “C’mon in.”

  Billie nodded at the man and sat next to him.

  The images shifted on the various screens, sometimes people, sometimes test patterns, sometimes information blurring past so fast she couldn’t begin to read it. A montage of humanity calling out to itself electronically, sending its voices and pictures out on invisible waves into the galaxy. Is anybody listening? Is anybody there?

  A woman appeared on the screen to Billie’s left. She was attractive, dark hair chopped short in a spacer’s cut, chiseled and even features, thin lips, good cheekbones. She spoke rapidly, her image without sound. Sweat beaded on her forehead, ran down her face.

  “Who’s that?”

  The tech glanced over at the picture. He smiled. “That’s Ripley.”

  “Ripley?”

  He looked at her as if she were a not particularly bright child. “Ellen Ripley. The Ripley. She was on the Nostromo and the Sulaco. She was there at the beginning, on LV-426, first contact with the aliens. Holds the record for long sleep, as far as we can tell. You been living in a cave the last few years?”

  “Yeah, you might say that. What happened to her?”

  The tech fiddled with the control. “Can’t get the sound, sorry. This is a real old ’cast. We catch a few of them now and then, light-speed being as slow as it is. Never know what you’re gonna pick up. I can plug it into the computer lip-reader, you want.”

  “What happened to Ripley?”

  The tech shrugged. “Dunno. She was the only survivor of the Nostromo. Basically a buncha truck drivers who sat down in the wrong place at the wrong time, got infected. She later went back out to the colony as an adviser with a crew of Colonial Marines. The colony was destroyed in a nuclear explosion. Probably they all died. There were some rumors…”

  Billie, exhausted, stared at the tech. Waited.

  “I had a buddy, used to work for a civilian biotech division of a major Terran company. He said Ripley managed to get offworld before the place blew. Wound up on an old prison world somewhere. They sent somebody out after her, but that’s where the story ends. A lot of shit got lost after the invasion. Who can say?”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “Not really. Spears—ah—General Spears studies everything available on the aliens. Bunch of it gets routed through here. You pick up stuff.”

  Billie stared at the woman on the screen. She felt a kind of kinship with her. How had she behaved when she faced the things? Was she alive somewhere? Or blown to atomic dust, the same way Wilks had blasted the aliens’ homeworld with nuclear flames? Or worse, webbed to a wall and used as a human incubator for a baby monster?

  The image faded. Billie leaned back in the chair and allowed the other vidpixs to wash over her. They were hypnotic, light strobing, low sounds droning her into a kind of somnolence…

  Without realizing it, Billie dropped into a troubled sleep.

  * * *

  The glob of slime apparently marked Peterson somehow as the first target. He raised his carbine and started blasting, waving it back and forth, spraying a 10mm fan of steel-sheathed lead. The armor-piercing bullets sang as they struck the ceiling, the roar of the exploding propellent smashed against the ears of the three marines, deafening them.

  Renus and Magruder brought their weapons up but not in time. The things dropped from the ceiling, peeled away from the convoluted resinous bas-relief sculpture, invisible until they moved.

  The first alien fell on Peterson, slammed him to the floor, knocked his weapon away.

  Peterson screamed, a wordless bleat, full of terror.

  The thing bounded up like a giant grasshopper, Peterson held in its claws like a doll.

  “Fuck! Shoot it!” Magruder yelled.

  “I can’t, Peterson’s in the way—!”

  “Out, out, get out, move—!”

  “Help!” Peterson finally found a word to put into the scream.

  The alien holding the man leapt toward the wall, reached it. Another alien—two, three of them—unfolded from the wall right in front of the marines and reached out to grab Peterson. They passed him from claw to claw upward.

  “Oh, man!” Renus fired, and the closet alien shattered under the hail of hard metal, spraying yellowish fluid in all directions like a popped water balloon.

  “Yaah!” Magruder yelled as some of the acid splashed on his suit, ate small holes in it. He turned, ran.

  Renus didn’t see Magruder go; he was busy waving his carbine back and forth, filling the corridor with noise and death. Another alien fell, cut in half at the hips. But Peterson was gone, moved up the wall, out of sight.

  More of the things dropped from the ceiling, sprang from the walls, charged Renus.

  “Die, motherfuckers!”

  The cyclic rate on the M-41E carbine was, in theory, nearly seven hundred rounds per minute. Slightly more than eleven rounds a second. With the weapon held continuously on full auto, therefore, a hundred-round magazine would be exhausted in a little over nine seconds.

  It was the longest nine seconds of Renus’s life.

  Three heartbeats after the magazine ran dry, one of the things sprang at him, shot that efficient toothed rod from its mouth right down Renus’s screaming throat. The scream turned into a choked-off liquid gurgle. The aliens had saved Peterson for implantation but Renus was nothing more than fresh meat. The last thing he did before he died was to trigger the grenade launcher on his carbine. The 30mm explosive shell hit the wall at an angle, bounced upward, and went off somewhere near the ceiling. The explosion washed the corridor with clean fire and deadly shrapnel.

  Magruder ran, driven by fear and adrenaline, the acid burns on his suit trailing acrid smoke. The blast wave hit him, he staggered, nearly stumbled, but kept on his feet.

  Ahead was a doorway marked Interior Life Support. Magruder reached the door, slapped frantically at the admit panel. The door slid open. He jumped into the room, pressed the closure control, held it until the door slid shut.

  “Jesus, Jesus, fuck!” Safe, he was safe, for now. He had to find a way out of here, fast! He looked around frantically.

  Something clattered, a rattle of claws on a metal grate.

  Magruder looked up. Saw one of the aliens
overhead on an expanded aluminum mesh ceiling plate. “Fuck!” He snapped the carbine up and fired. Half a dozen rounds hit the grate, some of them got through to the creature. It fell, a puppet with its strings cut, collapsed on the grating. Acid dripped, burned the grate, the floor beneath it, raising smoke and a stench.

  Magruder backed away from the acid rain, slammed into the wall.

  Something banged on the door. The thin metal dented inward as if it were no thicker than foil.

  “Oh, man!”

  A claw came through the wall and stabbed Magruder just above his left kidney. He lurched away from the pain, felt a piece of his back jerked out. He screamed wordlessly in pain. The shock hit him as the blood spewed from the hole in his back. He stumbled through the pool of acid eating away at the floor. His boots began to smoke. His feet took fire, blistered, began to char.

  He dropped his weapon, pulled at his boots, burned his hands getting them off.

  He leaned against another door opposite the one the things tore at.

  The door opened behind and he fell backward.

  Looming above him, something. An alien! No, it wasn’t a thing, it was a man! Thank God!

  Then he saw it was Spears.

  “The wages of treason are death,” Spears said.

  He smiled.

  * * *

  Spears had watched it all. The initial desertion. The frantic ride through the canyons. The entry into the air processor plant. This fool thought he could just steal a crawler and escape. Never even looked for the hidden cameras onboard the stolen property, the cameras that sent every moment of the trip back for Spears to enjoy at his leisure. Every word, every fart, every bump on the frantic ride. Just as the surveillance equipment had picked up the attack only moments ago. True, some of the network had been put out of commission by the drones, webbed over or covered by the resin secretions as they built their nest inside the plant, but plenty of photomutable gel eyes had remained. All of it had been recorded, fed to the computers at Third Base, where the tactics would be broken down and studied, used to extend his knowledge of his alien troops.

  The three deserters had panicked, lost it, and that disgusted Spears. Real marines would have used controlled bursts, overlapped their fields of fire, and walked through the drones to safety. But humans were weak, filled with fear, and they lost control. Their emotions damned them. Had three aliens been armed as the deserters, the wild strain would not have been able to touch them. That was what a real trooper was, one without fear. One without the emotional entanglements that came from being born of woman. In a way, Spears felt a kinship with the aliens. He had come from an egg and sperm, but had been carried to term without the uncertainty of a living mother.

  The marine at his feet—Magruder?—stared up at him. “G-g-general! Th-thank God…”

  “You fucked up, son. Fouled your jets right across the tubes. Because you are weak. But you served your purpose. Every little bit helps. They’ll be watching the recording of that chickenshit run you did for a long time. What not to do. A classic example of bad tactics built on an even worse strategy.”

  He turned. A pair of troopers in full combat gear stood nearby. They were nervous, fidgety, the stink of fear rising from them. Not much better than this scum lying on the floor, but at least they obeyed orders. It was what he had to work with, for now.

  “I’m done with this,” Spears said, waving at Magruder. “The drones are hungry. Give them supper.”

  Magruder screamed. “No! You can’t! Please!” He struggled to rise.

  One of the guards opened the door. The aliens were about to break through into the next room, the walls shuddered under their blows.

  “Please! Pleeaassee!”

  The two marines shoved Magruder toward the door. He stuck his arms and legs out, trying to stop himself. Caught the doorjamb with one hand. His fear gave him strength. He stopped.

  Spears kicked out with his boot and smashed Magruder’s fingers. Magruder screamed as he slid through into the room. The door slid shut with a grating noise.

  Spears watched through the plastic viewplate set in the door as the alien drones breached the wall and stormed into the room. Magruder’s voice filtered through the closed door. He kicked at the first alien to reach him, but it was a wasted effort.

  Spears turned away. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’re done here.”

  The two guards practically leapt to obey. That brought another smile to Spears’s face. A little example did wonders to keep the troops in line. Yes, sir. Indeed it did.

  12

  Powell paced back and forth in the hold of the cargo ship, his movements quick and nervous. “There were one hundred sixty-eight civilian terraformers,” he said. “Men, women, children. Spears gave them to the aliens. The air plant is automatic at this stage, you see, so the people were… redundant.”

  Wilks found that he was standing, his fists clenched.

  Powell stopped pacing, turned and faced the sergeant.

  “You let him do it.”

  “I’m not a murderer,” Powell said. “Not even Spears.”

  “I saw you reach for that pistol you carry when you got here,” Wilks said.

  “But I didn’t pull it. I would, I suppose, if I truly thought my own life was in jeopardy.”

  “And you don’t think it is? What the hell do you need, a formal declaration of war?”

  Powell chewed on that for a second. “Listen,” he said, “I joined the service to do my duty for my planet. I was studying for the priesthood at the time. I planned to finish my training and become a chaplain. It didn’t work out. I got sidetracked. So I wound up here. What Spears has done sickens me, but the path to the light is not by creating more darkness.”

  Wilks stared at the man. He’d run into guys like Powell before. The military had to have a certain number of medics and religious types. Their bent, because of what they did or who they were before they ever joined up, was usually pacifistic. If you were wounded in battle, you needed somebody to staple you back together, so a surgeon; if you were emotionally burned out, some kind of counselor, though Wilks himself hadn’t ever had much use for those, psychologists or fathers. They were necessary, but you didn’t want one next to you when the grill flamed on and the other side started shooting. And you didn’t want one in charge when your ass was on the line. It wasn’t that way with all of them—Wilks had seen medics who would just as soon carve your heart out as smile at you and men of various gods who would cheerfully burn a stadium full of small children if they thought that’s what their deity wanted. But Powell wasn’t one of those.

  And, given the situation, that was bad news.

  So what did the man want? Why was he telling Wilks all this?

  Abruptly it dawned on Wilks exactly why. Powell was one of those who bought his meat flash-wrapped at the market, or pretended it was soypro—but still ate it. He wasn’t a hunter himself but he wasn’t above enjoying the taste of the game—once it had been sanitized and neatly packaged. Once the thing had been gutted and the blood drained. He would eat it, but he wouldn’t hunt and kill it.

  And he at least knew a hunter when he saw one.

  Wilks nodded to himself. Fine. He could live with that. He was used to doing the dirty work himself.

  * * *

  The queen was a giant, bigger than other queens. A force of nature, unstoppable, irresistible, like something from an ancient mythos. She was the Destroyer of Worlds, she was the eater of souls, it was foolish to even think of resisting her.

  The queen loomed large, four sets of inner jaws opening and extruding like a Chinese puzzle box, able to spear and eat anything from mice to elephants. But she wasn’t interested in mice or elephants, she wanted other prey. She wanted—

  Billie turned to run, but her feet were mired in the floor, she struggled and could only manage a glacial slow motion, as if she were shod in lead boots, as if she were on the bottom of a deep pool full of thick syrup.

  She cried out, kept trying to
run, but it was hopeless. She could smell the queen as she drew closer, the sharp, bitter, burned-plastic odor of her flowed out in waves to envelop Billie. The stench of bodies a-rot for years in some dead and fishless sea curled over Billie, a pustulent and blackened breaker with bloody red foam about to crash down…

  Do not be afraid, the queen said. Her voice was soothing, a melody from childhood, the tones of a mother comforting a frightened baby. I love you. I want you. I need you.

  “No!” Billie screamed. She’d heard it before. She knew it was a lie. She struggled to move in her personal amber, a prehistoric fly waiting for the hand of Death, a doomed insect waiting for Eternity to smother her.

  I love you. Come. Let me touch you…

  A cold claw gripped Billie’s shoulder.

  * * *

  “No!”

  “Take it easy!” the tech said. He stood next to her, his hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re just dreaming.”

  Billie blinked, trying to make the transition from there to here.

  “I know how it is,” the tech said. “I dream about her, too.”

  Billie stared, unable to bring up words.

  “Tell the medics. They’ve got some stuff that helps.”

  “Nothing helps,” Billie said. “I’ve been dealing with this since I was ten. It’s only a matter of time until the dreams finally come true.”

  Outside the com room there came a sound as if someone were thumping down the hallway on metal boots. Billie was sure she knew exactly who it was.

  Ah, shit. What was she going to do about Mitch? Even as pissed as she’d been when they fought, she still felt that pull, that energy. Fuck, call it what it was. That love.

  Damn.

  * * *

  As they were leaving the complex, Spears took a short detour through one of the newer egg chambers. A mere dozen eggs rested here on the alien-constructed floor, all fairly fresh, only a couple of days old. He had surveillance gear everywhere; he knew there was no danger of these units hatching anytime soon. Plus, the doors, left open deliberately so the drones could move the eggs unimpeded, still worked. He had a trooper crank the doors shut, so he could be in the room for a few moments without interruption from nervous drone egg-tenders.