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

by Steve Perry

  The queen’s dark tail lashed out and the tip of it reached Ripley by the door. It thrashed down, thumped against the protecting bars of the mechano suit, bent the metal and stacked carbon fibers, smashed into Ripley’s skull. The force of the blow knocked her sprawling.

  The chamber washed out. Tiny bursts of light flashed around the howling alien. Ripley shook her head as the queen turned away from her, leaped at the hatch, and pounded on it. The trapped monster screamed for her freedom.

  The shrill sound faded as Ripley scrabbled backward and the world went to gray.

  * * *

  Wilks, Billie, Adcox, and Falk stood in a circle and faced outward. Scores of the drones loped past them without stopping, splashed through the shallow water toward their mother. If the cloying, chemical stench of rot, the heavy air, and the heat weren’t bad enough, hundreds of the nightmare creatures streamed past them, making it closer to hell than Wilks ever thought he’d be.

  Someone fired from behind him. Aliens screamed and hissed and kept running.

  One of the drones veered toward him, reached out, claws hooked—

  Wilks squeezed the trigger and sprayed the alien with a short burst.

  The thing fell into the water. Three or four of the bugs stumbled over the dead creature but kept running.

  Another monster howled, lunged at Wilks. He fired again.

  Falk cursed steadily behind him as more of the creatures stopped and were killed.

  Wilks knew they would never make the drop site. There was no way they could move amidst the army of mindless bugs and keep themselves covered. He aimed at one of the grinning drones as it looked in their direction and squeezed off a single round. The alien’s head exploded. It collapsed into the water, which bubbled madly now with the acidic blood of its brothers.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Billie shouted.

  Wilks pointed his weapon at another one and fired. “Five more minutes and the APC will detonate,” he called back. “We’ll fucking take them with us!”

  He squeezed the trigger over and over and hoped that their ammo would last until the white heat of the APC ended it all…

  * * *

  The queen’s tail lashed at Ripley’s leg, slapped it hard enough to move the pain from her head. Her eyes snapped open. She had crumpled against the wall next to the door when—

  My head, she thought. The queen still thrashed wildly at the outer hatch, but it wasn’t giving.

  Ripley hit the button that would get her out of danger. The door into the APC bay slid open.

  At the sound, the queen turned. With her tail coiled behind her, she prepared to leap—

  Ripley fell into the clean air of the dock and jerked her legs after her. Moto stood there, welder in hand.

  “Quick!”

  Moto slammed the control. The door closed a split second before the queen barreled into it. A muffled pounding started on the other side, but the reinforced metal held.

  Ripley leaned against the wall and watched Moto seal the entry. She never thought she would think the canned air of the ship was sweet, but it was; she was alive—!

  And the queen was hers!

  “Going for a ride, bitch.”

  McQuade stepped forward and helped Ripley pull off the leggings of the suit. “Christo, Ripley, you did it!” he said.

  Ripley winced as he pulled the metal boot off her left leg. “Yeah. Hurry, we have to go get the others!”

  Moto finished the door and stood. She and McQuade exchanged a look.

  “Can’t,” said McQuade. “Brewster says we’re getting the hell out of here.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Ripley. “They’re dead?” She suddenly felt dizzy and pressed a hand to her forehead.

  “No. The APC’s gone critical—it’ll blow in a few minutes. The squad’s pinned down in one of the narrow valleys, and Brewster said it’s too tight for pickup—”

  Ripley ran to the stairs before McQuade finished. Moto and the captain followed. She clambered up, ignored her body’s mute cries of pain as she climbed into the control room.

  Brewster and Tully sat at the console, expressions grim.

  “Ripley,” said Brewster. “Glad you’re—”

  “Get to those people, now!”

  “Look, there’s no way! I wish to God there was, but the wind is rising, there’s no goddamn room, and no time!”

  “Find a way,” she said. “If we die, we die. What if it was you down there?”

  Brewster frowned. “Listen—” he began.

  “No, you listen. You take it back or I will.” She was still in the top half of the suit and the servos whined as she snapped the grippers shut.

  He blew out a big breath. “Fuck it.” He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Hold on.”

  * * *

  “Less than a hundred rounds here!” Char yelled.

  Falk cursed and threw his weapon down. “Dry!”

  Billie moved closer to him and covered. Her head ached and pounded with the endless sound of explosions and shrieks. The air beat down on her, the world had become screams and death and it was too much trouble just to stand up—

  She hoped Ripley had made it, that it wasn’t all for nothing. She felt tears roll down her cheeks. A huge emptiness opened inside her gut as she took out another of the slavering aliens. She had been here before and she hadn’t gotten used to it, but she wasn’t as afraid as she had been the last time. Fuck it.

  The creatures suddenly scattered, backed away from their small group. Hundreds of them howled at once, reached their arms up to the sky. It was deafening. Billie turned to Wilks, confused—

  He pointed upward, a tight grin on his scarred face.

  The Kurtz! She hadn’t heard the engines, her ears overwhelmed with the alien shrieks and gunfire.

  Wilks grabbed her roughly, jerked her from under the drop path of the approaching ship.

  The aliens screamed, ran toward the descending vessel. Dozens of them were crushed into the murky liquid, smashed into the mud under the weight.

  The planet rumbled beneath her feet. A wave of the foul ocean rose up, knocked into them at chest level. Char fell, but Falk caught her; Wilks kept an arm around Billie and leaned into the wave. He fired at a drone that ran toward them.

  The APC bay door was open. Ripley and Moto stood on either side of the dock, holding on to metal struts. They pointed weapons past the four of them and fired continuously.

  Billie and Wilks ran toward the dock. Billie saw Ripley, was relieved to see she was okay. But then Ripley’s mouth formed into a scream. As they stumbled into the bay, Billie looked over her shoulder. The aliens were running into the suppressive fire and falling to the sides of the ship by the score. Falk was right behind them, but—

  One of the drones had grabbed Char. She had fallen forward, with an alien right behind her. As in some vicious parody of sex, it pushed against her, shoved her face into the water. Billie saw it plunge a claw through the back of Char’s neck, watched it force her head back up. Her blood was startlingly red against the gray water. Her head flopped to the side, hung by shreds of her flesh.

  The alien’s cry of triumph was short as bullets cut it in half—but Charlene Adcox was dead.

  Hundreds of the drones threw themselves at the closing lock as Ripley and Moto hosed their fire through the narrowing gap. Just before it shut completely, a lunging creature stuck one clawed hand into the bay. The lock cycled shut and cut two of the drone’s fingers off. They sizzled and hissed on the floor of the ship, burned smoking craters in the flooring.

  They were all pressed to the floor of the dock as the ship suddenly bounced and rocketed upward.

  “Brace yourselves—the APC will blow in a few seconds!” Ripley yelled. The words sounded far away. Wilks had hooked one arm around a metal beam and held tightly to Billie with the other.

  Billie didn’t hear the explosion, but the ship rocked violently around them. It tilted to one side, yawed impossibly. Billie and Wilks crashed
sidelong into the wall.

  And then it was over. The Kurtz straightened itself, smoothed out. Only the drone of the engines broke the silence.

  Billie took a huge gulp of air and began to sob against Wilks’s chest. He stroked her hair gently and didn’t let go.

  “It’s okay. We made it. It’s okay.”

  Once again they had outrun death.

  18

  Wilks pushed the gray bar up with a grunt and slowly lowered it to his chest. He exhaled, raised it again.

  He was alone in the Kurtz’s small gym. Falk had been there when he had walked in; the big man had nodded at him once, acknowledged his presence without a word, and left for the showers. Wilks understood. Their success with the capture was overshadowed by the deaths of three good people. No one wanted to talk about it.

  The decision to put off deepsleep for a few days hadn’t needed discussion; they were only one day from the mother’s planet and the crew needed time to digest what had happened. Time didn’t move in sleep, after all.

  Wilks set the bar back on lock and stood, reached for the smaller hand weights to work his pecs. He was already on his second set; his muscles trembled slightly as he extended his arms and brought them in. But the body fatigue could be ignored. Concentrating on workouts helped, a little. The sweat that dripped from his skin washed away some of the feelings. Anger. Sorrow. The guilt that had chased him for so long, that he was still alive, for what it was worth. A career marine who would never make it past sergeant, who couldn’t save the people who looked to him—

  Billie had holed up in her quarters alone. Wilks had gone to see her the night before and again this morning and had brought her something to eat.

  She had been listless, unresponsive. Her initial outburst of tears in the APC dock hadn’t been repeated. He had searched for something to say to drive that haunted look from her eyes, but what? He could almost see her replay the death of the lieutenant over and over as she stared at the wall. Her friend. Her friend who she undoubtedly had felt responsible for.

  Wilks had saved Billie’s life more than once, and she his—but to save her from guilt? That was more than he could do for himself. So he sat and watched her until the frustration had been so great that he had excused himself, come here.

  Coward, his mind whispered. Fucking coward.

  Another part of him spoke up. Hey, I’m not a shrink! I’m just a marine…

  Yeah. Right.

  He sighed heavily and moved back to the leg machine. Maybe a third set would pound his brain into submission.

  * * *

  Billie sat on her bed and tried not to think. They were in space, the mother alien was quiet in the hold, they were on their way to kill the brood on Earth and save Amy—

  —who is probably dead, like Char, like Carvey and Dunston, killed, murdered, dead—

  She pressed her hands to her forehead and waited for tears to come. No chance. She didn’t deserve the release, and the sadness was too big. That they had been so close to the Kurtz, inches from safety…

  Carvey and Dunston, too. Brewster’s best friend and the man who had been a teacher, who had convinced her that he had made a choice. To die. She hadn’t known either of them as well as she had Char. Charlene. Billie had asked her on the trip that had cost her her life.

  Wilks had been to see her, twice. She had tried to eat after he had gone, but the food stuck in her throat. Wilks’s usually unreadable face had spoken plenty. She knew that he wanted to help, to make it better for her, but of course there was nothing to be said. They all had their own guilt.

  Dylan Brewster had come last night after Wilks had gone, to explain that it should have been him, not Carvey. That Carvey had never been a “real” marine—his friend had been a kid at heart, eager to please. Hell, Carvey had only come on this trip because of Brewster—

  Billie understood his pain, but was alone in her own.

  She had not asked him to stay.

  She tried to be objective, to tell herself that Char had made her own decision. That was true—and it didn’t matter, because she was gone.

  She’d thought she had come for Amy, but it was really about saving herself. Char Adcox had come to deal with her own loss, and Billie’s reasons seemed selfish in comparison. Would the end justify the means? How could she know? Maybe the aliens were meant to have Earth; who was she to fuck with fate?

  Billie lay down and pulled the coverlet up to her chin. Maybe later she would go talk to Ripley. But not now.

  * * *

  Ripley sat leaning against the dock wall next to the containment chamber and listened. Every now and then the queen rustled, a sliding, clicking noise as she moved her sharp body against the smooth, alloyed interior of her prison.

  Ripley had spent most of the night here; the queen had eventually tired of pounding and screaming in the early hours of morning. Ripley checked the navigational comp and set McQuade to work on repairs—the damage to the Kurtz had been minimal. Jones tried to get her to medlab, but she was fine. And she had wanted to listen to the queen beat uselessly against the walls for a while.

  Ripley was sorry about the deaths of Dunston and Carvey and Adcox; they had all died to get the queen to the Kurtz, and she knew that a large part of the responsibility was on her shoulders. But she would have died, too, had it been called for. To wipe out the murderous breed, the bitch queen who had caused the deaths of so many…

  The fleeting desire she’d had to blow the queen into a million pieces when she could have was nothing compared to her hatred. The rage was hot and temporary; her hatred was cold and hard and forever. The bastards’ extermination would vindicate all she had become.

  She knew that living a life for revenge was not a healthy way to exist. She didn’t care. This was right, she felt it stronger with every passing moment; each hour was a step closer to fulfillment.

  The empty bay in front of her suddenly doubled. Ripley blinked several times. The double vision cleared.

  Her head still ached where the bitch’s tail had slapped her, but it was minor. The huge bruise on her leg already seemed to be fading. She was just tired, and hadn’t eaten lately—

  The thought of food and sleep was appealing. She stood and walked away from the door to the chamber.

  “Later, you shit,” she called out over her shoulder.

  As she started toward the stairs, she noticed that the ship seemed to tilt slightly to the right. She frowned and paused, reached one hand out to touch the wall. The gravity wasn’t supposed to flicker like that, she thought, taking another step toward the ladder. Suddenly, she felt like she was standing on the wall. She leaned into it, tried to right the effect.

  “Tully!” she shouted.

  No response.

  Something was horribly wrong. She saw the alarm button on the wall and reached for it.

  Why hasn’t it gone off already—?

  It was her last thought as she hit the button and the lights went out.

  19

  Billie sat silently in the mess hall with the others. After McQuade’s short rundown of the Kurtz repairs, there didn’t seem to be much to say.

  They waited to hear Jones’s voice over the ’com—or better, to see Ripley walk into the room.

  An hour ago, the alert horn had snapped Billie awake and she had run into the corridor, prepared to hear the queen’s fury erupting from the lower deck. The alarm had shut off seconds later, and Ana Moto had ’commed shipwide to report that she’d found Ripley unconscious and carried her to medical.

  They had all gone to the mess hall to wait it out.

  Moto appeared a few minutes later and told them that the doctor was running a full diagnostic and would call when he knew.

  Billie felt so tired that it was all she could do to keep her eyes open. The tension in the room only made her more exhausted. When would it stop? Now it was Ripley who could be dying, the woman she had grown to respect and admire and care about—

  Wilks sat beside her and drank coffee. As usu
al, his expression revealed little. Billie was envious of his control. Nothing seemed to affect him for more than a few seconds; he reacted, then just dealt with what there was.

  In comparison, she was a child, chronologically and emotionally. Her inner cries of unfairness were petty and pointless. And they changed nothing…

  Billie chewed at her lip and waited.

  * * *

  Wilks toyed with his coffee cup, aware that it was a good time to talk to Billie. He was concerned about Ripley, but Jones was the expert. There was nothing he could do there. Probably not a fuck of a lot he could do here, either.

  Billie stared blankly at the table, as if watching a holo. Even when Bueller had been left on Spears’s planetoid, she’d been able to talk about it. Sort of.

  When Moto and Falk started a conversation across the room, he was ready.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” she replied, voice dull.

  “I’m sorry about Adcox,” he said. No answer. “I wish she were here. I wish I could’ve traded places with her.”

  Billie looked at him. “Why? It’s not your fault.”

  “After Ripley left, I was in charge of the APC. I was responsible.”

  “You didn’t make her come here, Wilks! I—” She stumbled on her words, stopped.

  Wilks put his hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t either,” he said.

  He felt out of place trying to comfort her, but he couldn’t stand the look on her face—it reflected how he felt most of the time. He had learned how to hide it, but it was still there. She hurt. He knew.

  She relaxed a little into his hand.

  “It’s really not your fault, Billie. You didn’t make these things.”

  She looked away for a long time, and finally, she nodded. Her gaze turned to his, her eyes bright with tears, and she nodded again. “No,” she said shakily. “I didn’t.”

  Wilks felt his own tight gut loosen a bit. It was a start Maybe he hadn’t fucked up so bad after all—

  “Hey, folks,” the ’com crackled. “You there?”

  It was Jones.

  Tully called back. “What is it? How is she?”