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

by Steve Perry

  * * *

  “Did we make it?”

  In the tiny cabin of the pod, Wilks blew out a big breath. “Yeah. We did. He’s outside our radar range, but he must have gone back to the cargo ship to check it out. I’d love to see his face when he realizes there weren’t any explosives rigged.”

  “I’ll pass on seeing his face again, thank you.”

  Wilks laughed. Then frowned. “He got away, though. He beat us and got away. I wanted to get him in my sights.”

  “You ought to be glad he didn’t get us in his sights. Where are we, by the way? And where are we going?”

  “We’ll be inside Luna’s orbit in another couple of days, if the guidance computer on this piece of junk can be trusted. I’m getting some signals from the region, too faint to hear much. Could be automatic from Earth. Or something from the colony on the moon, if it’s still there. Gateway Station in L-5 orbit, maybe. I’ve got the scanner set to pick up the strongest input and home in on it. You can shuck the suit if you want. There’s a chemical toilet in the back, behind the blue partition. We’ll have to sleep in our seats and our diet will be a bit limited, but we should make it okay.”

  “You did real good back there, Wilks. You’re a lot smarter than you let on.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, and a whole lot smarter than you look.” She smiled and he returned it. He fucking hated losing Spears, but she was right. It was better to be alive to fight another day and at least they had that much.

  * * *

  Spears brought the queen out of deep sleep first, still securely in her cage, of course. She could see him through the clear walls, and he flicked the cigar lighter over and over, watching the little flame reflect off the heavy kleersteel plastic.

  “Oh, yes, I know you remember me. The time has come for your children to go forth and do battle. You can lay a million eggs if you do as you’re told, if my soldiers obey me as they should. Do you understand?”

  He put his hand on the plastic.

  The queen turned her head slightly but did not move.

  She understood, he was sure of it. Not the words, maybe, but she was smart enough, he knew that. The drones weren’t too swift, their wattage was real dim, but the queen wasn’t stupid. She knew him, and she remembered him and he was certain he’d put the fear of God in the form of Spears into her. It would all go the way it was supposed to go. And soon, the moment would be upon them.

  * * *

  “Approaching vessel identify yourself,” the call came. “This is Gateway Station calling.”

  Wilks smiled at Billie. “This is the escape pod from the Colonial Marine vessel Jackson,” he said. “Two passengers aboard, uncontaminated, repeat, no alien contamination of this ship.”

  “Escape pod Jackson, open your control modem for grid computer override.”

  They were still far enough away so the transmission turnaround time took a few seconds. Wilks gave control of the pod’s engines to the grid computer.

  “Pod Jackson, you are in the grid. We’ll fly you in lazy eights until the decontamination team can rendezvous your vessel. Estimate arrival time nine hours.”

  “Copy, Gateway. We’ll be here.”

  Billie lifted an eyebrow.

  “They have to check us out to make sure we aren’t carrying any little toothy surprises,” he said. “That means the station is clean. Gateway is pretty big, half the size of the old Luna One colony. Twelve, fifteen thousand people before the trouble on Earth. Probably built a few more modules since then to make room for escapees. We’ll be quarantined until they are damned sure we’re not infected, that’d be my guess. Run us through a CAT scanner or a fluorproj and then we’re home free.”

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “We’re finally going to get somewhere safe.”

  Maybe, he thought. But looking at her face, he didn’t say it. He only nodded.

  * * *

  It would take most of his remaining fuel to land the carrier, but he had the APC for his own return to orbit. The reason he had brought the Macarthur was that it could stand a dunking in atmosphere and normal gravity. He expected to take heavy casualties, despite the training and arms his men had, but that was to be expected, and the ship would have to stay behind. It was unimportant.

  As the ship spiraled down toward its landing in South Africa, Spears showered, shaved, and put on his dress blacks. He strapped the revolvers on, the sword in its sheath, his boots. Looked at himself on the monitor. Sharp. The way a commanding general should look. Fit, ready, imperial, almost.

  He took one of the remaining cigars and tucked it into his belt, to open and light when the ship achieved a landing. The troops were already being decanted, although the queen was still safely in her cage. By the time they reached the ground, they would be ready. There would certainly be a hive nearby, he had his computer searching for one, and they would put down close to it. When the wild aliens streamed out to attack the ship, they would get a big surprise.

  The cameras were on, the automatic director picking the most dramatic shots according to the program Spears had installed. Low angles on him, mostly, with plenty of background stuff he could cut together later.

  Fully dressed, Spears moved to the staging area where the troops, numbers glowing dimly on their heads, stood quietly, awaiting their orders. Slime dripped from their mouths and there was a slight clatter of hard chitin when they moved or touched each other.

  “Stand by, men,” Spears said.

  He went to strap in for the final approach.

  Weather radar said there was a storm front moving across the landing area. Damn. He had hoped for a sunny afternoon. Well. The cameras could adjust for the lighting; he could clean it up when he edited it. Besides, a little lightning and rain would only add to the drama. This was all background stuff anyway. Once they were down, he would have his computers send out a live broadcast of the battle. The fortunate watchers could say they had seen it as it actually happened.

  * * *

  On Gateway Station, Billie and Wilks cleaned up and went to make their report to the powers-that-were. A lot had happened since they’d left Earth, nearly all of it bad. So the medic leading them to the debriefing station said.

  “Yeah,” the man continued, “nobody knows how many people are still alive downlevels. Those who are, are pretty tough and good at hiding.”

  Billie thought about the little girl she had seen on the ’casts back at the military base. Was she still alive?

  “Hey, Henry, check this out.”

  The medic leading them slowed as a woman nearby waved at them. “Whatcha got, Brucie?”

  “Live ’cast from Earth. Look.”

  Billie and Wilks moved with the medic.

  “Jesus,” Billie said. “Spears!”

  Henry and the woman Brucie turned to look at her. “You know this nut?”

  Billie and Wilks looked at each other. “Yeah,” Wilks said. “We’re old friends.”

  * * *

  The ramp lowered and Spears walked out into the rain. His hat brim offered enough protection so the cigar stayed lit, though it was getting pretty damp. He sucked on it hard to keep it going.

  In the rainy distance Spears saw shadowy forms approaching. He drew his sword and pointed at them. “First squad, front and center. Second squad, fan out and cover the flanks.”

  He had decided to hold off on giving his men weapons until he saw how his close combat tactics worked.

  Number 15 moved close to Spears. Turned its head and looked at him.

  “Go get them, trooper,” Spears said. He waved the shining stainless-steel blade.

  Number 15 stood motionless. Then its mouth gaped and jellylike drool dripped from its open jaws.

  “I gave you a direct order!” Spears said.

  Number 15’s inner jaw oozed past the outer teeth.

  “I’ll not have disobedience!”

  Spears swung the sword. It was heavy, made of good surgical stainless, with an edge shar
p enough to shave with. The blade caught the alien’s thin neck. The strike was perfect, slicing between the vertebrae into the thinner and more flexible material over the spine.

  Number 15’s head toppled off and fell.

  Enough acid clung to Spear’s sword blade so that it immediately began to smoke. The metal dissolved and ran under the pattering of the rain.

  Spears stared at the ruined blade. “Goddammit!” He dropped the sword and pulled both of his S&W revolvers. He fired at the corpse of Number 15.

  * * *

  “Holy shit,” Brucie said.

  Wilks and Billie stared. Wilks looked down and realized that Billie was holding his hand.

  * * *

  Half a dozen of the troops came out of the ship behind Spears. They were carrying the queen in her cage. She made a gesture at one of them and it fumbled with the locking mechanism.

  “Get away from that!” Spears yelled. He emptied the remaining rounds from his revolvers at the drone—Number 9 he saw—to no effect. The soft lead bullets flattened against the recruit’s armor.

  The cage door opened.

  Spears dug for his cigar lighter. Held it up so the emerging queen could see it. Flicked the lighter on. Despite the wind and rain, the lighter’s flame sprang up and danced in the storm.

  “Fire, see! I’ll burn every fucking egg you ever laid! Fire!”

  * * *

  “Oh, man,” somebody said. Billie wasn’t sure who. She was squeezing Wilks’s hand hard. And he was squeezing back.

  * * *

  The queen paused in front of Spears, looking down from her four-meter height.

  “That’s right, bitch! I’m the man with the fire! I cook the babies! Fuck with me and we’ll scramble some eggs, you bet!”

  Like dogs, the aliens could not really smile. But the queen seemed to, the way her jaws moved. She flicked out one of her smaller arms and slapped the lighter away.

  “Fuck—!”

  Then she grabbed Spears and lifted him, using her larger arms. He struggled, cursed, pulled the cigar from his mouth, and tried to poke her with the glowing end. It was all going wrong! It wasn’t supposed to be like this! He was supposed to be in control!

  The queen reached up and caught Spears around the throat with one mighty claw.

  “Don’t do it, men!” he screamed. “Don’t listen to her! I am your commander now! Obey me! Stop her! Stop her!”

  Those were his last words. His last thought was that somebody had made a mistake. He had time to realize that it was him, that the queen had merely been biding her time and that her time was now—

  * * *

  With a quick move, the queen pulled Spears’s head off. She did it as easily as a man might pull the head off a flower. She dropped the body into the mud below the ramp. Held the head for a moment longer, then tossed it aside.

  As luck had it, the head hit right in front of one of the cameras, and rolled to a stop facing the lens.

  The expression on the dead man’s face was one of absolute horror.

  “So much for the revolution,” Wilks said, staring at the picture.

  The onrushing aliens stopped and looked at the newcomers. After a moment the would-be attackers turned and moved off through the storm.

  The newly arrived queen led her children away.

  The glowing numbers on their heads were visible for quite a distance before they faded into the rain.

  Quite a distance.

  “Fuck,” Henry said.

  Oh, yeah.

  30

  After debriefing, Billie met Wilks in a conference room nobody seemed to be using. There were viewscreens on the wall, but Billie didn’t feel much like looking at anything.

  “He deserved it,” Wilks said. “I only wish it could have been us who did it. We’ve been blowing around in circles for a while, kid. Haven’t been much a part of the solution.”

  “I know.”

  “Then again, Spears wasn’t much help, either.”

  Billie shook her head. “You know, crazy as he was, I was almost hoping maybe he could pull it off. I mean, I hated him, for what he was, what he did, but in a strange kind of way, I kind of wanted him to make it. Maybe I’m as crazy as he was.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Big deal. Now we’re back where we were before. The monsters rule Earth, billions of people are dead, the rest are all waiting for their turns. And there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it.”

  “That’s a bad attitude,” somebody said from the doorway.

  Billie turned and looked. A woman stood there. Tall, thin, hair chopped short, wearing shipper’s coveralls.

  “Do we know you?” Wilks said.

  “I don’t think we’ve met before,” the woman said.

  But Billie recognized the face. It took a few seconds to remember where she’d seen her before. It had been back on the station, in the communications room. She’d been on one of the old ’casts.

  “Ripley,” Billie said. “You’re Ripley.”

  The woman gave them a brief, small smile. “That’s right.”

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” Billie said.

  “From what I hear, so are you two. The universe is just full of surprises, isn’t it?” She grinned again, a little larger.

  “Damned if that ain’t so,” Wilks said.

  “I think we have a few things in common,” Ripley said. “Maybe we ought to sit down and talk.”

  It was Billie’s turn to smile now. “I think maybe you’re right,” she said. Ripley was right, after all:

  The universe was just full of surprises.

  For Dianne; and for Little Flower; welcome to the club.

  SCP

  For my friends and lovers, my mom and brother, and especially my collaborator who taught me much of art and craft; thanks, Dad.

  SDP

  “If you are captured by the Indians, don’t let them give you to the women.”

  Attributed to U.S. frontier cavalrymen during the attempted extermination of the Dakota Sioux

  1

  Ripley felt the little girl’s arms tighten around her neck as she slammed the lift button repeatedly.

  The queen was almost certainly right behind them. They were going to die down here. The thought filled her with a sudden dizzying wave of sickness and she hit the button again. They were going to die in this hellish, humid, artificial pit on a crumbling planet, a big piece of which was itself about to be blown into atomic dust.

  “Come on, goddammit!”

  She hiked the crying child up higher and looked back over her shoulder into the darkness. Steam hissed from a ruptured pipe, adding a hot fog to the dankness of the alien-spittle covering the walls. She could feel it coming, could almost hear the rapid steps of the approaching mother, even over the screaming alarms and sirens. She had destroyed its children, hundreds of its deadly offspring, and she had no doubt that it was on its way to rip her and the girl apart.

  She looked up then, saw the bottom of the lift slowly descending, still a few floors up. Any second now…

  From behind them came a piercing scream, inhuman, full of rage. Ripley instinctively clutched her weapon tighter and ran to the ladder attached to the wall; maybe they could catch the elevator on the next level up. “Hold on to me!” she shouted.

  And then she was there, like the others but larger, swollen even if no longer gravid.

  The queen had a huge crown, a comb of glossy black that swept up and back from her misshapen head. A second set of arms, smaller, jutted from her chest. It—she—moved slowly toward them from around the corner a few meters away, hissing and drooling.

  Ripley backed away; the girl tightened her small, sweaty hands in a finger lock to keep from falling.

  The lift, it was here!

  Ripley spun.

  The door opened, the mesh gate slid away, and they jumped in. Ripley slapped the control button more frantically than before—

  The queen ran toward them—

  The wi
re gate closed…

  Shut a second before the alien got there.

  Ripley put the girl down, pointed her flamethrower at the creature, fired through the mesh. The fuel was low; only thin and weak spurts of flame came out, but it was enough to stop the alien.

  The queen snarled; thick streams of slime dripped from her open jaws. She held back.

  The outer door closed.

  Safe! They were safe!

  The ride up was rough; explosions rocked the building, falling pieces of debris slammed into their all-too-slowly-rising lift. But they made it to the flight deck.

  As the outer door opened, a calm female voice informed them that they had two minutes to get the minimum safe distance from the site, before the whole processing plant blew itself into nonexistence. They ran together from the lift, and—

  Where the fuck was the ship?!

  It was gone! Their ride had taken off; that goddamned machine, the android, had betrayed them!

  Ripley screamed in anger, pulled the little girl toward her. Flames leaped all around, the building rocked and shook with deafening noise… and now, another sound. Ripley looked at the lifts.

  Another elevator coming up.

  Oh, no. It couldn’t be. The queen couldn’t know how to operate an elevator! She couldn’t!

  But she is smart, a little voice said inside Ripley’s head. You saw her when she realized you were going to burn her eggs, how she waved the drones off, kept them away from you. At first.

  Ripley looked at her carbine. The counter said it was out of ammo. The flamethrower taped to the gun was also dry. She dropped the weapon, picked up the child, backed away.

  The lift came to a stop, the door slid open. Ripley hugged the girl tightly.

  “Close your eyes, baby,” she said, and closed her own.

  * * *

  “Ripley? Are you okay?”

  Ripley opened her eyes and looked at Billie, the young woman sitting across from her. Billie looked concerned, a slight frown creasing her brow. Ripley liked her, had liked her in the first moment or so of meeting—unusual. Trust was hard to come by these days, at least for her. But Billie’s account of her childhood rescue had stirred up some stories of Ripley’s own…