Aliens Vs Predator

[alvspr]

Yes I'm reposting this for those that want it.

First chapter sucks but after that its not too bad so please forgive me for the first chapter.

CHAPTER ONE

Determination. You could see it in his eyes. The way he walked. The way he held the file that was in his hand. He was determined. He worked his way up from the bottom, manipulated his enemies to get where he was today. He had been waiting for this moment his entire life and wasn’t going to miss the chance.

Too many people before him had rushed in hoping to secure victory and as a result, secured failure. Too many people had died for him to go down that road. He was determined not to fail.

As he walked towards his destination, he thought about the past events leading up to this. How many people died because they hadn’t listened to that woman? Well he would listen to what she had to say. Ripley was no fool. She went up against these things more than once and had only just gotten away with her life. There was no one dead or alive who knew more about these creatures than her. Not even himself. Even so, death still caught her. In the end, he thought, these creatures had always won.

He came to a door with a security keypad next to it. He entered his number that allowed him access and the door opened. He walked through, down another hallway.

He just couldn’t understand how after all she had told them, they had still insisted on trying to capture one of these creatures the hard way. He knew why. They were dumb. Too worried about dollar signs.

He came to another door, this one with an armed guard standing next to it.
He didn’t give the guard a second thought as he signed his name in the book and read his access card through the slot.

Once through that door he began to think about what he was about to ask the Board of Directors to do. They wouldn’t come to the decision lightly. He would make sure of that.

He came to another door. He stopped to take a breath. This was it, what he had been waiting his entire life for. He took one glance at the Weyland Yutani Corporation sign on the door and entered.

Eleven pairs of eyes watched him enter. They were all seated at a big oak table. One of those long tables you would normally find in a mansion. He came to his chair at the head of the table and dropped the file on the desk. He didn’t sit. He wanted everyone to look up at him.

He made eye contact with everyone, hoping to see signs of commitment. Instead he saw signs of bewilderment. At the other end of the table sat a General. General of the United Systems Military. He had a cold look in his eyes. He was probably the only other person in the room that understood what they were up against.

“I guess by now you all know why you’re here,” he began. “I’ll cut straight to the chase, Another site has been found. We have another opportunity to go after the alien.” No one made a sound.

“We all know the legend of Ripley. I doubt that you know the details. This is not something we should rush into.” He leaned on the desk, “before we even begin to contemplate going through with this, we will listen to what Ripley has to say and to what my men have to show you. Let me tell you that this information was not easy to come by.”

He started to walk around the table, making eye contact with every member there. Andrew Franks, Chairman of the board of directors of the Weyland Yutani Corporation needed everyone’s attention. “In front of you there will be a file. This file is Ripley’s first statement. The one she gave to the board of inquiry after they found her floating around for almost sixty years in hypersleep. She still holds the record for the longest hypersleep. You will note that she gives a fairly detailed statement from when they woke up to when she detonated the Nostromo. These are her words gentlemen. This is primary evidence.”

He paused to let that sink in. “Considering the events that have taken place since then, we must assume everything that Ripley has told us, is correct.”

“This event took place 257 years ago. 57 years later she is found in the shuttle having drifted through the core systems. Now is where the #$@*% really hits the fan,” Franks said as he came to his chair and sat down. “After giving this statement to a board of inquiry,” he tapped the file with his finger, “she finds out that terraformers have set up a colony on LV426. Naturally she assumes the worst. However, it took a company man to sentence those colonists to death. He made a call to LV426 and gave them the coordinates that Ripley had. Guess what happened?”

“What was his name?” someone asked. Franks looked at him with a glare that would melt ice. “Burke. Carter Burke. Just a low down shit kicker trying to make it in the big time.”
“How did he ever find out about Ripley?”
“He was the company rep for the deep salvage team that found her. All reports from that team went through him.”

“Wait a minute,” someone else said, “didn’t Ripley say that they set down there on Company orders? Who gave them the orders?”
“That is something we don’t know. We do have our theories,” he replied.
“Such as...”

“Looking at the records we believe that another ship passed close to LV426 before the Nostromo. There are no records of it having landed on LV426 but they could have altered them. My theory is that they landed under the same impression, the acoustic beacon. Once they saw the Alien Ship they got out of there and fixed the recorders so they would get their bonus money. Maybe the guy who gave the orders was on that ship and decided to have someone else take a look. He saw that the next ship to pass near there was the Nostromo, being a company rep he took off the current science officer and replaced him with Ash and also changed the flight plan so that they would pass close enough. When they went missing, he shut his gob so as not to get into trouble. There are no records of any such thing happening but it’s the closet I can come to explaining it.”

He paused waiting to see if there were going to be any more interruptions.

“Of course the colony is wiped out and we lose contact. The board of directors at the time decided to bring in the military not wanting to go up against these creatures by themselves. They turn all juristriction over to the Marines. Ripley goes along as an adviser. Keep in mind that these Marines were the best of the best. They go in, find the colony wiped out and in turn get wiped out themselves. After the first encounter with the aliens only Ripley, Burke, a synthetic by the name of Bishop, the little girl they found, three Marines and the Lieutenant, who was knocked unconscious survive. To cut a long story short, Ripley, the kid and one marine survive. Bishop survived as well only in a few more pieces then before.”

He stood up, looking into the eyes looking back at him. “Now gentleman, what I’m about to show you was not easy to come by. We have the actual recorded images from the individual marine’s video cameras. Finding something like this after 200 years was not an easy task. We will now watch the first encounter the marines have with the aliens. We have set it up so that you will be seeing everything that Ripley, Burke and the Lieutenant saw in the APC. This is unedited footage.”

To be continued

[alvspr]

Chapter One Continued...

He turned to one of his men who was standing by the door and told him to play the tapes. The lights turned off and one whole wall began to slide up, revealing a row of monitors. Everyone turned to watch the monitors. They flicked on, almost simultaneously.

The images they showed were of a dark place, possibly a basement. Everyone watched in silence, as the marines went down stairs to the sublevels.

Someone asked, “why’s it all fuzzy?” Just before Franks could answer, the marines on the videotape answered for him.
“Ah, your transmission’s showing a lot of breakup,” one of them said.
“Probably getting some interference from the structure,” another one answered.
Franks looked at the one who asked the question and raised an eyebrow before turning back to the monitors.

Franks had seen it all before. He was one of the ones who put the video back into order. That alone had been quite a job. Getting all the individual videos to link up with all the others. He was now watching the reaction everyone was giving.

“Looks like some sort of secreted resin.”
“Yeah, but secreted from what?”
“Nobody touch nothing....”

“Ah, look, Apone, we can’t have any firing in there. I want you to collect magazines from everybody.”
“Is he fucking crazy?”
“What’s he expect us to use man, harsh language?”
“Sir I’ve...”
“Just do it Sergeant. Flame units only, I want rifles slung. And no grenades.”

Franks turned to the General. The General looked back, no emotion showing on his face. He knew what Franks was thinking. That to go up against the aliens with nothing but a handgun and maybe a flame-thrower was sure way to kill yourself. But of course, these marines didn’t know that. Yet.

Franks and the General turned back to the monitors. This was where it all happened. Franks would watch carefully the reaction that everyone was about to give. These highly trained marines were about to die.

He watched as a marine moved closer to someone hanging on the wall in the alien secretion. The marine lifted the head up. The eyes opened. Nearly everyone jumped. Only the General and Franks didn’t. They had seen it before. The alien came bursting out of her chest, snarling viscously. Twin bursts of flame flew forth to consume the alien and its now dead host. It screamed in its death.

It didn’t come through the microphones to well but Franks could hear the aliens screaming at the murder of one of their own. The marines were now alert.

“Movement”
“What’s the position?”
“Ah, can’t lock in.”
“Talk to me Hudson.”

Franks could hear the tension in his voice. He knew everyone else could to. He watched one particular monitor. The marine turned in a full circle, looking at the wall as she turned. “Maybe they don’t show up on infrared at all,” the marine said.

The shit hit the fan. The marine was taken from behind, lifted up into the air screaming. Franks now watched the board of directors for their reactions as the marines were wiped out. There were mixed reactions. Some were impassive, not showing any emotion but most looked terrified. One broke out in a sweat.

“Let’s rock...”

“Hudson look out...”

“Drake, we are leaving...”

“Eat this...”

The monitors flicked off and the lights came back on. No one moved. No one made a sound. No one took their eyes off the blank monitors. Franks watched them. He hoped he hadn’t scared them enough not to help him go through with his plan. He just wanted them to realise that they had to plan this.

“It had all happened so fast,” one of them said.
“I didn’t think they were that vicious,” said another.
“My God,” was all one of them could say.

“You all saw what happened. You now know why this company for 257 years, has been trying to capture one of these creatures for our bioweapons division. Let me tell you some of the alien characteristics. Acid for blood. Its reproductive capabilities. Its strength. It has no sense of self-awareness meaning it doesn’t care about itself, but the hive. It doesn’t show up on infrared. It can survive in the vacuum of space. It can hibernate for goodness knows how many years, hundreds at least. And how about it’s just plain mean.”

Franks went on. “I’ll tell you what happened after this. Only three marines that went into the nest actually got out alive thanks to Ripley. The Dropship crashed due to alien causes. Everyone left fortified themselves in the operations centre of the complex. The dropship crash caused the plant to overheat and therefore melt. This was going to result in an explosion. Bishop went out to the uplink tower to remote pilot the second dropship down to them. The aliens found their way in and two marines, the Lieutenant and Burke die leaving only Ripley, the kid and Hicks the Corporal. While escaping to the dropship the kid is captured by the aliens and taken to be a host. Hicks is doused in acid but not fatally. Ripley then goes in search of the kid. This is where she meets the queen. After destroying her nest she escapes back to the dropship with only minutes to spare before the explosion, unknowingly taking the queen with them. Ripley then fights the queen in the hanger in a power loader. And that was that. Or so she thought.

“The queen had laid a single egg and the facehugger got onto Ripley while she was in hypersleep. The facehugger cut itself on the glass causing a fire and the eev pods to eject with the hypersleep chambers. They landed, or rather crash-landed on a planet called Fiorona, Fury 161 where there was a prison facility. Only Ripley survived the crash. We think a facehugger captures a dog for its host. Once again, the #$@*% hits the fan. One alien kills over twenty prisoners. After this alien is killed, once again by Ripley, the company shows up ready to take the alien out of Ripley. She declines preferring to kill herself than to let the company have the alien and in turn killing more people. Any questions?”

“Yeah, how did the queen lay an egg?”
“At this point we can only speculate about how she laid the egg. We think that in survival situations where the queen has to leave the nest in a hurry, she rips the egg sac off. She is then able to lay maybe only one egg to keep the species going. That egg is higher up in her abdomen. Of course, this is only speculation.”

“You said that one facehugger got Ripley while she was in hypersleep and that another got a dog. If what you said about the queen was true, where did the second facehugger come from?”

“We think it got a dog. We can’t be sure. Again, we can only speculate. We think that maybe a facehugger was with the queen when she chased after Ripley onto the dropship. That gives us two facehuggers. One for Ripley and one for the dog. One of them cut themselves on the glass as it was trying to get to the kid. The company was already halfway to LV426 when they got the call that Ripley was on Fury161. All records came back to us and that ship. They changed direction and proceeded to Fury161. That was how the company got there so quick. This team was led by Don Bishop. The man who designed the android Bishop. The android Bishop was a recording device for the company. Bishop was designed with the purpose of recording. Of course bishop was destroyed. This team was launched because the company thought that the marines would all be killed. They were pretty much right. But once they saw that Ripley was infected they went straight for her. Of course, Ripley killed herself.

“Now, after the company left Fury 161, they traced the flight path of the eev back to the Sulaco. There they actually found the egg in a different spot to where they expected it to be. We think that the second facehugger moved the egg through instinct. This was the last egg and so the facehugger moved it so that no one could come and destroy it. We actually have a statement from one of the prisoners that tells us everything that happened on Fury 161. It basically just tells us how the alien killed everyone and their plans to stop it. Any questions?”

Everyone looked at everyone else, trying to think of a question they could ask and hoping that someone else would.

“How long after LV426 did this event take place?” one asked.
“The eev was ejected from the Sulaco between 24 and 48 hours after they entered hypersleep.”
“How long was Ripley on the ground?”
“Four days.”
“Wait a minute, didn’t Ripley say that these things had a gestation period of about 12 hours?”
“Yes she did. But she had a queen in her. We believe, and once again this is only speculation, that because it is a queen, the gestation period is longer. You have to imagine that in the wild when a queen is hatched it must have time to leave the current nest and give the host enough time to get as far away as possible.”

“Wouldn’t the queen destroy the queen egg if she laid it? That way there would be no compition to compete with.”
“Possible. But looking at the history of these creatures, not once have they showed any individualism. It has always been for the species. Maybe that’s why the queen doesn’t destroy the egg. Or maybe it being the last egg she lays, it is always a queen. Who knows? This is what I want to find out. I’ve only given you speculative answers. I want proof. If half of what I’ve told you is correct, these creatures are probably the most amazing and dangerous creatures ever discovered.”

The board of directors looked at one another and at the file under Franks arms as he leaned on the desk. Then they looked at the General who stared right back at them.

To be continued

[alvspr]

Chapter One Continued...

“That’s not all of it,” Franks suddenly said, getting everyone’s attention.
“What?” one of them said.

“Oh it gets better. Around 100 years ago, the military decided to try and go after these creatures themselves.”
“How?”
“They tried to clone Ripley.”
“They what?”
“They tried to clone Ripley. They got a blood sample from Fury 161, or according to their mistaken reports, Fury 16.”

“What good would cloning Ripley do? Weren’t they after the alien?”
“Yes. But they thought that if they cloned Ripley from a blood sample from when she had the alien in her, they would get the alien as well.”

“Cloning doesn’t work like that. It works on the genetic structure of the blood sample. The alien would have to insert its genetic structure into Ripleys for that to work.”
“Correct. They tried anyway, and guess what happened. They got the alien.”

He paused letting that sink in. For a creature like that to be able to play with the genetic structure of its host spoke volumes of its ability.

“However. They botched it up. It took them twenty years and eight physical attempts at cloning to get Ripley and the alien. Even then they botched it up. The seven attempts before the last were completely ruined. Too much alien DNA. We think that the alien acts on a genetic level so that it can take on the characteristics of its host. Not the other way around which is what happened in this case. The aliens had too much of Ripley in them. They weren’t a pure strain of alien. They were flawed. And Ripley in turn survived, which hosts aren’t supposed to do. Ripley also had alien traits in her. She was not entirely.... human.

“With this in mind,” Franks went on, “it might be possible to get different strains of aliens in the wild. Ones with different characteristics and behaviour patterns.”

“For example…;” one of the members asked.
“Well for example the creature on Fury161 we believe came out of a dog. It’s possible that this alien had different characteristics to those on LV426 which of course used humans for their hosts. Maybe it was a faster runner, or more ferocious. Who knows maybe we could even get flying aliens.”

“How?”
“Well if a facehugger was to capture a large bird, who knows. Once again, this is all speculation.”

This all happened when this company “officially” closed down, 100 years ago. That was when the military was getting to nosy so the board of directors at the time decided to officially close office and instead work in secret until about fifty years ago when they opened back up again.”

“What happened with the aliens?”
“Of course they escaped and started a killing spree but in the end they all died because an android crashed the ship they were on.”
“Android?”
“Second Gen. She patched into the network and found out about the aliens. Of course what she found out wasn’t the truth, the whole truth so help her god. What she patched into was carefully monitored by us. The company made sure that she knew enough to go and try to stop it. She didn’t know the half of it and half of what she did know was false. Hell she thought it was a hundred years later for Christ’s sake.”

“Why did the company let her know?”
“Because we knew all about what the military was doing and knew that they wouldn’t have a chance. We let her know so that when she went and was either killed or successful in her mission, we could find out all we want to know by getting her little black box. Her recording device.”

“What about Ripley? The clone.”
“She lived and died of old age two years ago. Ripley is dead.”
“How do you know? Did you see her body?”
“No, I didn’t see her body. I saw a grave. A tombstone.”
“How old was she?”
“Who knows, but she was older then she had any right to be. We believe that the alien DNA extended her life somewhat.”

He looked into everyone’s eyes, lastly the General before he went on. “There you have it gentleman. The saga to date. Just for the record, the first encounter on the Nostromo took place in the year 2122. The second encounter on LV426 took place in the year 2179. The third encounter on Fury 161 took place approximately two days after that. The forth encounter on the miltary vessel the Auriga, took place in the year 2279.”

Everyone sat silent. Thinking about the information they were just given. “So what’s the story now? How can we go after the alien again?” one asked.

“A survey team has landed on a planet on the outer rim. They found another ship, just like the one the Nostromo found on LV426. The team went in and we haven’t heard back from them since. We assume that the aliens are there.”

“You assume?”
“Yes. I know that it might not be true but we’ve got to give it a shot. That’s one other thing I want to know. What is the connection between the aliens and the creator of that ship on LV426. We don’t even know where the alien comes from originally let alone what this creature was doing in a ship with thousands of eggs from the aliens.”

“That reminds me,” someone said, “Why didn’t the colonists on LV426 hear the acoustic beacon?”

Franks answered, “It could be a number of things. It could be as simple as the batteries running out. There could have been an earthquake destroying the mechanism, who knows just that they didn’t hear it.”

“And why can’t we just go back to LV426?”
“Because the derelict spaceship was blown up along with the atmosphere processor.”
“How large was the explosion,” someone asked sounding as if they didn’t believe a word of it.

“Bishop estimated the explosion at 30 kilometres. He underestimated. The blast radius was in fact closer to 70 kilometres, the shockwave itself going out to about 200 kilometres. This in turn caused major earthquakes and with the atmosphere as unstable as it already was, it didn’t take much for the spaceship to be destroyed along with it. LV426 is now inhospitable.”

“What is it you want us to do?” one of the directors asked.
“I want your authorisation to go ahead in another attempt to capture one of these creatures through any means necessary,” Franks said matter-of-factly.

“How do you plan to capture one?”
“That’s the Generals’ department,” Franks said holding his hand out towards the General. “He has a keen interest in these creatures as well and if we agree to this, he will take care of the nasty end while we provide the research, providing the General here gets some, how shall we say, fringe benefits.”

Everyone looked around. Stared into each others eyes. Everyone nodded their head. Who knows what recording devices were in this room. No one wanted to go on record but they wanted the creature as much as anyone.

“Thank you gentlemen I’ll take care of it from here,” Franks said.


END OF CHAPTER ONE

[alvspr]

CHAPTER TWO

The giant ship floated onwards towards its destination. The ship was on the outer rim of what humans called the edge of space. In reality, the ship was just next door to Earth.

Humans haven’t really searched the universe much.

The ship had a cargo to deliver. That cargo was deadly. Three whole platoons. The best of the best. These soldiers were about to face their worst nightmare.

“ATTENTION,” the sergeant screamed. The soldiers were all lined up in full battle armour, holding their rifles. They stood tall and straight.

The General walked down between the soldiers. He had a look of calm about him.

“Men, what you are about to face is like no other enemy you have ever seen,” the General began. “They don’t play by the rules, because they don’t have any rules to play by. You’ve all seen the video tapes so you know what you’re up against.”

He walked towards the open door of the dropship. “We have a mission. To capture an egg. Don’t disappoint me.”

The General took one last look at the marines. “Load them up sergeant.”
“Yes sir,” the Sergeant replied.

“All right men load up,” the Sergeant yelled as he stepped forward.

The marines began filing into the dropship at a fast pace. “Come on, move it move it move it.”

There was a lot of noise as weapons were stowed and marines were locked in their seats. “Come on people we’re going in hard and fast so I want no slackers. Combat seating.”

The marines quickened their pace, if that was at all possible.

Once they were all seated, the General said, “All right gentlemen, this is where the shit really hits the fan.”

***

The planet surface was like hell itself. there was not one bit of flat ground in sight.

Out here in the middle of nowhere, sat a ship. It wasn’t a small ship. But on some godforsaken planet, it seemed very tiny.

There was no movement. Nothing. It was just sitting there.

The marines came down fast. Their parachutes enabling them to come down silently. They landed running towards the ship with their guns raised. Their parachutes getting cut off and left behind.

One platoon to the front, one to the back and the last, 500 metres away for backup.

The first platoon came up to the door fast but silently. Using hand signals the sergeant motioned for the light box to be placed on the ground in front of the door.

The marines positioned themselves and pointed their rifles at the door. One marine reached forward towards the door release switch. Another marine had his hand on the light box switch.

The marines tensed. The soldier hit the door switch and a split second later the other soldier hit the light box switch.

the door flung open and the ship was bathed with a bright light. The marines charged in. They charged through the first room looking in every direction, their rifles pointing where they were looking.

They went through the second room. And then the third. Finally they had searched the entire ship and had found no one.

“All right men,” the Sergeant said, “gather your strength cause that was the easy part.”

Everyone knew that they wouldn’t find anyone here. The dropship had already done a scan with motion trackers and infrared detectors. That didn’t mean there were no aliens.
“General,” the Sergeant spoke into his mike. “Nobodies home. Looks like they’re all over at the ghost ship.”
“Naturally,” the General replied.

“All right C Platoon, you just became the leader. Get your asses over to that ship and get me an egg.”

“Yes sir.”

***

The Ship sat there like a predator waiting to pounce on its prey. Silent. Unmoving. The marines closed in. They moved swiftly until they were right outside what appeared to be the front door of the U shaped ship.

Their guns raised, they waited for the command. The Sergeant looked at the opening, seeing only blackness. This was it. This was the last chance to turn away.

“All right Presario, give me a sparkler,” he said to the marine kneeling next to him.

Presario pulled the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and swung it behind his back. He then pulled a rocket launcher off his backpack. He kneeled in front of the opening, placing the rocket launcher on his shoulder. He aimed and fired.

The rocket shot forth through the opening and down the hallway spinning leaving behind flares that stuck in the walls, the roof and the floor. It looked a lot like fireworks. The flares stayed lit lighting the hallway as the Sergeant watched the rocket turn the corner at the end of the hallway.

The marines could now see the entire hallway with the flares stuck everywhere.

“All right gentlemen,” the Sergeant said, “let’s go.”

The marines moved in, not one of them wishing to make a sound. They walked down the now lit hallway, searching for any kinds of life. Human or alien.

They came to a large room with what seemed to be a stage of some sorts taking up most of the space. They all climbed up and found a chair. This was no ordinary chair. It was obviously made for a creature that was much larger than a human. The chair they were staring at was empty.

The marines all looked at each other, wondering what on Earth fit into that chair. A low whistle brought everyone’s attention around to the sergeant who was standing over a hole in the floor.

The marines all moved over to the Sergeant, some pointing their rifles down the hole, others taking position and pointing their rifles outwards.

The Sergeant was looking down the hole. With hand signals, he indicated that he wanted a bomb flare dropped into the hole. One of the marines pulled out a six inch tube that was about an inch in diameter. He pulled the pin and dropped it into the hole.

The marines for a split second ducked their heads and turned their backs to the hole. There was a muffled sound and then sparks flew out of the hole. The marines quickly turned back to the hole and looked down the now lit drop off.

The Sergeant held up two fingers, indicating that he wanted two marines, and then pointed down the hole, meaning he wanted them to go down. Very quietly, a marine set up a tripod with what looked to be a rope attached to it. Two marines moved over and attached two ends of the rope to small holes on their back armour.

Then they literally walked over the edge of the hole face first, the tension in the rope allowing them to stand upright and walk down the wall. They had their rifles raised and began walking to the bottom.

Once they got there, they moved quickly and made sure they were alone.
“My god,” one of them said.
The Sergeant replied, “What is it Henricks?”
“Eggs sir. Hundreds of them.”

The marines glanced at each other. “All right, I want C platoon down the hole,” the Sergeant said. The marines of C platoon took it in turns on the rope to get down the hole. Once they were all down they fanned out, rifles at the ready, waiting for their orders.

“Swanson, Motion Trackers,” the Sergeant ordered. Swanson pulled out a small box with an LED display on it. The motion tracker worked a lot like a sonar on a submarine. It sent out pulses and with the echo, can distinguish whether there is something moving in the distance. It has range of up to and including two kilometres out in the open but in enclosed spaces with walls and roofs, that distance is cut dramatically down to about thirty metres.

“No movement,” Swanson said.
“All right. C Platoon, get us an egg.”

The marines of C Platoon moved out into the chamber amongst the eggs. They were covered in a bluish mist that made a high pitched sound as it was disrupted. They converged on one egg. Two marines moved in while the rest took up defensive positions. One marine had his rifle trained on the egg.

The two marines took out a tube that was large enough to hold the egg. They held the opening of the tube over the top of the egg and slowly brought down over it. There was movement within the egg. Both marines jumped. “Hurry up man,” the marine aiming his rifle at the egg said.

Both marines quickly brought the tube down over the egg until it was resting on the ground. They got what appeared to be the top of the tube in one hand and placed it on the ground next to the tube. Then one marine lifted one edge of the tube up and the other slid the top under, lifting the egg off the ground.

They then clamped the tube shut with the egg inside. One marine pressed a button on the top of the tube and it began to rapidly fill with a clear liquid. Once the liquid reached the top a marine spoke into his mike, “Done Sergeant, we have the egg in stasis.”
“Good job. Now get back up here.”

Just as the Sergeant said that, the motion tracker Swanson was holding made a sound. All Marines tensed, their eyes all looked towards Swanson. The Sergeant glanced over. “Movement,” Swanson said.
“Where,” the Sergeant asked. When he didn’t get an answer straight away, he asked again. “Where?”
Swanson looked up, sweating he said, “Everywhere.”

To be continued

[alvspr]

Chapter Two Continued...

The Marines started looking in every direction, trying to locate any movement. “Range is twenty-five metres,” Swanson said.
“C Platoon, stay where you and take up defensive positions we have movement. Presario,” the Sergeant said.
“Sir.”
“Light this room.”

Presario held his rifle and pumped the grenade launcher. He aimed into one corner of the room and fired. A projectile shot out and stuck high in the wall of a far corner. Three seconds later it exploded in sparks. The sparks lit up half the room.

“Range fifteen metres,” Swanson called out. Presario aimed and fired into another corner. As the projectile exploded, the marines saw the aliens. There were dozens of them, all charging the marines. The marines were taken aback at the ferocity of the aliens. But these were good marines and at a range of ten metres, had enough time to start shooting.

The chamber lit up as pulse rifles sang their sweet song. The bullets entering the aliens bodies and blowing them apart. Every marine swung around to add their bullets to the fray. the aliens didn’t have a chance.

The Sergeant was in the rear screaming, “Osmer, Parson, Wilson, get your asses covering the rear god damn it.” While the Sergeant was screaming he didn’t notice the hoard of aliens coming in from the rear. He didn’t have a chance as an alien came up behind him and struck him in the back of the head with its super strong teeth. His blood and brains splattered everywhere.

Presario noticed the aliens coming and screamed, “Behind us!” Four marines swung around. One alien was almost on top of a marine as he fired his rifle at point blank range into the sternum of the creature. The acid hit his armour and face and began eating into his flesh. His scream was cut short by another alien biting into his skull.

“B Platoon, get your asses in here!”, Presario yelled into his mike. The marines of B Platoon were outside the ship providing back up. The marines charged down the long hallway. When they got to the end they saw their worst nightmare come alive as three big aliens reached down from the ceiling and started picking up the marines almost with ease.

One alien was shot down but its acid killed two other marines in the process. Aliens were coming from everywhere. A Platoon was down to three men. Presario screamed, “Down the hole.”

As he connected the ropes to the front of his armour he saw one marine taken down by an alien. He convulsively fired his rifle as he was spun around, a bullet taking out the eye of the other marine. Presario was by himself. He did the only thing he could do. He jumped down the hole backwards, the rope connected to his armour allowing him to fall backwards at non-lethal pace. He sprayed the top of the hole with bullets as he fell.

He had hardly reached the bottom when hands reached out and grabbed him and pulled him back. C Platoon had been listening to the entire firefight with fear. Presario said, “B Platoons’ still up there.”

They could hear the battle that was raging above their heads. Multiple rifles firing and aliens screaming. Worst of all, they could hear the fear in the marines voices through their mikes as they tried to get a grip on the situation.

All of a sudden they heard an explosion, then silence. “B Platoon sound off,” Presario said. Silence in the way of static was his answer. “#$@*%,” someone said.

“All right, we’ve got to find another way out of here and quick,” Presario stated. “Corporal, it’s your move.”
The Corporal of C Platoon looked shaken but said, “All right C Platoon through the chamber.”

The Marines started to move through the chamber amongst the eggs. Their rifles were pointing in every direction, just waiting for an alien to pop out from the shadows. They searched the entire chamber and found no other way out but the way they came in.

“Fuck! Now what are going to do?”, someone asked.
“Go back up the hole.”
“How? Those things will get us the second we stick our heads in there.”

Just then four big aliens shot through from the hole charging the Marines. Luckily, some Marines already had their weapons trained on the entrance and made short work of the deadly blur streaking towards them.

“We have to do something and quick,” Presario said. “Corporal?” The Corporal looked at Presario and said matter-of-factly, “We’re going to have to shoot our way out.” Presario nodded.

Presario moved over away from the marines and loaded a rocket into his rocket launcher. He knelt down and put the rocket launcher on his shoulder. He was taking aim when he heard something. It wasn’t a loud noise. He slowly turned his head towards the sound just in time to see the flaps of an egg open up.

He jumped back screaming as the facehugger leapt out at him. He just had enough time to drop the rocket launcher and get his hands up in front of his face. Something wrapped around his neck as he tried to fight the creature off. The marines turned at the scream and two men raced over.

Just then, aliens began streaming out of the entrance to the hole. The Marines, caught off guard, swung around and opened up their rifles. The two marines reached down and dragged the super strong facehugger off the choking Presario. Presario grabbed his rifle and the Marines threw the facehugger up in the air. It was dead before it hit the ground.

The Marines turned back to the aliens firing their weapons with reckless abandon. Their training almost forgotten, they fired and fired and fired.

The marines were being pushed back and back as the aliens just kept on coming. Presario grabbed his rocket launcher and aimed and fired into the wall.

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Two Continued...

The explosion knocked a few marines off their feet, the aliens being what they were, weren’t. They took the advantage the momentary lull in gunfire provided and charged in. Three marines were killed without a second thought, two more were carried off for more facehuggers.

“Marines, out the hole,” Presario yelled and raced towards the hole in the wall that he made with his rocket launcher. The remaining four marines turned and ran, occasionally turning and firing to keep the aliens off their heels.

Presario was through the hole and turned back to cover the other four. “General, you had better get down here with that dropship cause we’re dead outta luck,” Presario said into his mike. “Roger that, we’re coming down on your position.”

Presario watched as one alien leapt off the wall he had just ran past straight onto the Corporal. He shot it to pieces. The other three ran hard, one tripping over an egg. He had barely hit the ground when an alien scooped him up and carried him away screaming.

Presario covered the two remaining marines as they charged towards the hole. No one noticed as an egg opened up. The two marines ran on and just as they were about to go through the wall, the facehugger jumped landing squarely on the face of one of the marines.

He fell down unconscious as the other marine lent down to drag him out. Presario stepped forward to help him. One arm holding and firing his rifle, the other helping the other marine drag him out.

They were five feet out of the hole when the other marines’ rifle ran dry. The alien was quick. With the firepower cut to half in an instant, the alien raced forward and grabbed the marine, its teeth going straight through his skull.

Presario had hardly any time to turn around. He swung his rifle towards the alien but watched in surprise as it was blown apart and away from him and the marine on the ground. Fortunately, none of the acid landed anywhere near them.

“Presario duck,” the General screamed. Presario ducked down and watched as tracer fire flew no more than a metre over his head into the charging aliens. The force of the firepower was enough to blow the aliens back.

As the dropship came down to no more than a metre from the ground, it flew in as close as it could get to the marines, its guns blazing the entire time. Presario dragged the unconscious marine to the door of the dropship as it flung open.

The General was there with a rifle and was blasting away at the aliens while Presario heaved the marine into the open doorway of the dropship. He climbed in himself and the dropship took off, leaving behind the frustrated aliens.

Presario slumped in a corner trying to catch his breath while the General walked towards the cockpit. “Rhodes, I want you to do a flyby and make sure that that ship is destroyed. Not one alien is to survive, do you understand.”
“Yes sir,” Rhodes the pilot said.
“I don’t care if you have to blow up half of the goddamn planet.”
“Sir.”

The General walked back to Presario and the marine lying on the floor with the facehugger attached to his face. “We have to get him into stasis as soon as possible,” he stated. “We can’t do anything for him here but back on Earth maybe someone can help him.”

The General and Presario dragged the marine to the hypersleep chambers and placed him inside one. They walked back to the cargo hold and looked out the window to watch the derelict spacecraft get blown to high heaven. “As far as we know, there is only one more alien,” the General said glancing at Presario. “This had better be worth it General.”

They watched the giant mushroom cloud in awe. “Come on, let’s go home,” the General said.

END OF CHAPTER TWO

[alvspr]

CHAPTER THREE

The child woke up screaming. It was the middle of the night and the air was still. His mother came in turning the light on. ‘Shhh Rebecca, it’s alright. I’m here.’

‘Mommy.’
The mother hugged her as she sat up and reached out. ‘Now, now what’s wrong?’, she asked.
‘I had a scary dream,’ the child replied.
‘There, there, it’s over now,’ she said comforting her child. ‘Try and go back to sleep.’

Rebecca looked at her mother with fright. ‘I can’t, the monsters will get me.’
‘What monsters?’, her mother asked.
‘Scary ones with big teeth.’ Her mother looked at her with a touch of sympathy.

‘Come on now, listen to me, there’s no such things as monsters.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because, I went and asked the police and you know what they said?’, she asked.
‘No,’ Rebecca said shaking her head.

‘They said that there are no real monsters. The only monsters out there are ones that exist in our heads. And do you know what the scary thing is?’ Rebecca shook her head. ‘I’m one of those monsters,’ she said as she pounced on Rebecca, tickling her. She squealed in laughter.

‘Ok, time to go to sleep.’ She got up and walked to the door and turned back to look at him. ‘Goodnight Rebecca.’
‘Goodnight mum.’ She turned the light out and walked back to her room.

***

He was laid out on the table like he was a science experiment. The thing was, he is a science experiment. He was unconscious and had tubes and needles stuck on him all over his body, taking readings.

His face was bare. Men standing around, taking readings and discussing them. On one table under a microscope sat the facehugger. Dead. Having impregnated the marine it had come off and died, its job fulfilled. It was now up to the embryo to do its job.

Andrew Franks walked into a room adjacent to the one with the marine in it. He was looking through a window at the activity that was taking place. It was all finally falling into place.

The General walked in behind him. ‘Good job General,’ Franks said. The General didn’t look at him when he replied, instead looking into the next room. ‘Don’t give me that bullshit. A lot of good men died.’
‘Ah, c’mon General, you knew that that was a possibility. You knew what we were up against. Frankly, I thought that you wouldn’t be able to pull it off.’

‘You should kill it,’ the General suddenly said.
‘What?’ Franks said startled.
‘I’ve seen these things in action,’ the General said finally looking at him. ‘Ripley was right. These things are far too dangerous for us to be keeping them here, let alone trying to control them.’

‘Relax General,’ Franks said trying to calm him down.
‘I had three platoons down there and they all got wiped out in a matter of minutes and these aren’t your everyday marines. These were hand picked, the best of the best and only one of them made it out alive, two if you count sleeping beauty over there.’

Franks just looked at him. ‘General we know what we’re doing.’
‘I sincerely hope so,’ the General said stepping closer, ‘for both our sakes.’

He turned around and walked out of the room leaving Franks standing there, looking through the window at his prize. If only the General could understand he thought.

***

He was sweaty. Presario was on a treadmill. He had been there for the past two hours. He couldn’t keep his mind off of what happened. He kept picturing those things just coming for him. Those Teeth. Those eggs. Those people screaming in their death.

He stopped running and turned the treadmill off. He grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat from his face. As he turned around, the General was there.

‘How’re you holding up?’, the General asked.
‘Great. Just great,’ Presario replied sarcastically.
‘Look,’ the General said stepping closer, ‘I want to apologise for sending you out there.’

Presario looked at him. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘That’s the thing. I believe it was,’ he said with a sad look on his face.
‘You shouldn’t blame yourself General. You did everything you could to let us know what we were up against.’
‘Yeah, maybe you’re right,’ the General conceded.

‘How’s Perry holding?’, Presario asked. The General looked hesitant before replying, ‘He didn’t make it.’

Presario looked at the ground, shaking his head. ‘Goddamn it. Why me?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘General, out of thirty marines, I was the only one to survive. They all died within a matter of minutes. Why was I the only one to survive?’

The General looked at Presario, studying him. ‘Listen, Presario, I’ve got an assignment I want you to do. But first I need you to make a statement and answer a few questions to one of my colleagues. Maybe we can work out a way to fight them if we ever come across them again.’

‘Yeah, sure. When?’
‘Now. If you’re feeling up to it?’
‘Yeah,’ Presario said, resigning himself to the fact that he was going to have to talk about it sooner or later. May as well be sooner.

‘Let me have a shower first.’
‘Of course.’

To Be Continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Three Continued...

Three Days Later

Franks was walking down one of the thousands of hallways that occupied the Weyland Yutani building. At last he was getting results. He was now on his way to the Alien they had held in a cell thirty levels below sea level.

It was not your everyday prison cell. State of the art. Designed for one purpose, to contain the uncontainable.

He entered his security number on the keypad next to a door that was indistinguishable from all the others in the hall. The door opened and he entered.

He entered his security number on the keypad inside the small room. He had actually just hopped in an elevator.

Once the elevator had reached its destination, the door opened and Franks exited. A security guard immediately stopped him and asked for identification. It was just a formality. The guard knew who Franks was but was just doing his job.

Once the guard had taken a drop of blood from his finger, he placed it in a hand held machine. It was testing his DNA. As soon as the green light came on the tiny machine, Franks was off down the hall before the guard could say a word.

Franks saw Whiteman step out of a room to come meet him. Whiteman was the head research scientist and was the only other person who knew as much if not more about the aliens than Franks did.

‘Ahh Whiteman, tell me you have some good news,’ Franks greeted.
Whiteman responded, ‘I’m not sure what to make of it sir, but it is rather interesting.’
‘And what would that be?’, Franks asked as they both started walking down the hall.

‘I think it’s best if you just come and see for yourself.’
‘I hate it when you say that Whiteman, it makes me nervous.’

They entered a room that had a wall sized window on one side. The Aliens cell. Franks looked in. All he could see was blackness. Slime and hard black resin that was all over the walls.

Franks broke out in a sweat. He couldn’t see the Alien anywhere. ‘Where is it? Where is it?’, he shouted.
‘Relax,’ Whiteman said pointing into the room, ‘it’s in the back righthand corner.’

Franks stared where Whiteman was pointing. He could hardly see it. The only reason he could see it now was because it had moved. Only slightly. If he had not been looking as closely as he was, he would have missed it.

‘What’s it doing?’, Franks asked. Whiteman took a while to answer but when he did, he had Franks attention. ‘We’re not sure. At a guess I would say that it is cocooning itself.’

Franks looked at him. ‘Cocooning itself? You mean it’s going to change?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Again?’ Whiteman nodded. ‘Into what?’
‘Who knows,’ Whiteman answered with a shrug of the shoulders. Franks looked distraught. This was something that was not thought of. That there was another element to the aliens life cycle.

‘One theory that holds the most weight is that it’s metamorphasising into a queen. We think that maybe in survival situations when there is no queen around to keep the species going, a drone can turn into a queen,’ Whiteman explained.

Franks, getting over his initial shock, began to see the advantages. ‘That would mean that one drone alien could effectively take over an entire planet.’
‘That’s true,’ Whiteman agreed. ‘One drone placed on a planet could take it over by turning into a queen and therefore laying all the eggs needed to create more drones.’

‘This little weapon of ours is getting better by the minute.’ Franks turned to leave, ‘call me when it hatches alright.’
‘Will do.’

***

The marine fell to the ground behind a rock wall as bullets pounded into it. He reloaded his ammo clip and peeked through a hole to see where his attacker was shooting from.

He couldn’t see anything. Just rubble from the blown up buildings. Too much cover for him to see where anyone was.

He guessed by the rate of fire of the enemies bullets, he had finally found his true enemy. This was no Sentry Gun shooting at him, it was a hand held rifle. His attacker was close.

He had come through the worst kind of enemy territory one could imagine. Mine fields, Sentry Guns and booby traps galore. He had outsmarted his nemesis thus far. If only he didn’t do something stupid now, he would win.

He heard movement off to his left and immediately laid down suppressing fire in the general direction. He then backed up to another wall. He waited.

Ten minutes went past. Nothing. He was starting to get impatient. He knew he shouldn’t, not with victory this close but that’s when patience tends to do a disappearing act.

He decided he would have to press the attack anyway. He crawled down towards the side of a blown up car. He took out his only grenade and placed under the back end of the car. He then slowly moved back, making some noise but not enough to sound suspicious.

Once he had made it to some cover he sat and waited. He had a good idea of where his attacker was. If his attacker was just going to wait for him and get dug in. He would have to go to him. He knew where he would be.

He blew the grenade with his detonator and raced off, his rifle up and ready. It was hard to move quickly over all the rubble, especially with a full Marines pack on and a rifle, but he was fast.

He intended for the grenade to cause a distraction while he raced in for the kill, hopefully unnoticed and too quick for his enemy to do anything. He reached the place where he thought his attacker would be and fired.

Nothing. He was wrong. His enemy was not where he thought he would be. Realisation laced with dread swept through him. He turned around quickly and was face to face with his attacker. He didn’t hear the shot but he knew that his enemy had fired.

He had no idea of what happened. His attacker could not have moved behind him. He had full view of the battlefield. He dropped to his knees. His enemy had won.

‘For fucks’ sake,’ the man standing over him said, ‘how many times do I have to tell you people, your enemy is never where you expect them to be. Kill the program.’

In an instant, the rubble, the blown up car and buildings all disappeared to leave behind an empty room, the size of a factory. Other marines came walking up and helped the fallen soldier up.

He hadn’t been shot, only slightly shocked by and electric beam to signify his failure.

The man who had made the winning shot was Presario. The marines all looked a little sheepish. All twenty marines standing in front of Presario had gone through the program alone. Only six had won against Presario.

‘We’re going to try it again, this time you go in two’s so team up. We’re going to keep going with this until I think you’re worthy of joining the elite, is that clear?’
All the marines moaned as they said, ‘Yes Sergeant.’

To Be Continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Three Continued...

***

The queen was big. Bigger then he thought. The alien drones were nothing compared to the queen Franks thought.

He was watching his prize through the window. He couldn’t believe his luck. Instead of a drone alien, he now had a queen. Whiteman was right in his theory that a drone could metamorphasize into a queen.

He had the feeling that the queen knew who he was. That the queen knew he was the one who had masterminded its capture.

Whiteman walked in. ‘It’s amazing isn’t it?’
Franks turned and looked at him. ‘Yes. Quite. Good job Whiteman,’ Franks congratulated his partner. ‘It’s big,’ he commented. Whiteman, leaning forward to look through the window, responded, ‘It sure is.’

‘How many eggs has it laid now?’
‘Ahh, twenty-three,’ came the reply
‘Twenty-three what?’, a loud voice behind them asked.

They turned around and saw the General had entered and was watching them. Whiteman allowed Franks to answer. ‘Twenty-three eggs General.’
‘And when are you going to destroy them?’
‘Why would we want to destroy them? This is more then we could’ve hoped for and you want us to destroy them. Forget it General,’ Franks said, shaking his head.

Whiteman tried to look inconspicuous as the argument heated up. ‘Look, keeping one of those bugs in here is dangerous, keeping a queen in here is asking for trouble and keeping eggs in here is stupidity hard at work. You must destroy them!’, the General screamed at Franks.

‘General,’ Franks said through clenched teeth, ‘may I remind you that it was you that got us that alien in the first place, not to mention all the background work you helped us with.’

‘I understand now what these creatures are like. I have seen them in action. They are not to be messed with.’
‘General, you are just getting cold feet,’ Franks tried to explain.
The General almost exploded with rage, ‘I am not just getting cold feet. I’m telling you that those things are beyond dangerous.’

‘General, you are overreacting. You’re beginning to listen to Ripley way to much.’ The General had to stop to take a breath. When he spoke he did so with surprising calm. ‘Have you ever seen these things in action? I’m not talking about what you’ve seen on any tape or what you’ve read about in some report, I mean have you actually been in amongst these things?’

‘Of course I haven’t General but I don’t see how that would matter?’
‘What do you mean it won’t matter?’

Everyone paused. They could hear a hissing sound, as if something was melting. ‘What’s that noise?’, the General asked. They all turned and looked towards the alien Queens room. They all gasped in horror.

While they were all arguing, the Queen had detached herself from her eggsac and was right up against the super thick glass. She was holding a facehugger up against the window. The facehugger was ripped open. It’s acid was burning through the glass. The fact that they could hear it hissing signified that the acid was just breaking through.

The General turned around and stepped out of the room screaming for a guard. Franks took a step back, swearing. In some detached part of his mind he noticed that there were other facehuggers climbing to get out. All the eggs must have hatched he concluded. Not one, but all. He turned and bolted from the room.

Whiteman was staring in shock. He couldn’t move. His mind didn’t work. He could hear the alarm siren going and only dimly realised what was going to happen to him as a facehugger jumped onto his face sending him into a coma.

The facehuggers were scrambling out of the hole that the acid had made. One facehugger caught one of the guards that came tearing into the room with their rifle raised. The guard fell to the ground with the facehugger firmly attached.

It was mad panic. Guards were coming from everywhere and scientists were trying to escape. They all knew what that alarm meant. They all knew that something dreadfully wrong had happened.

Franks was running down the hallway. He saw the General running back with some guards. ‘Where’s Whiteman?’
‘I don’t know,’ Franks replied almost mad with panic. The General and the guards ran forward leaving Franks to run for his life.

The guards moved swiftly. The General thought they were good but would have been more reassured if they were his soldiers. They came around the corner of the hall. They could see a guards legs laying out the door of the room.

All of a sudden a facehugger charged them. It lasted no more than two seconds before it was blown apart. They cautiously moved forward. When the General saw that the guard had a facehugger attached, he aimed his pistol and fired four rounds straight through the facehugger and the guards head.

People came screaming around the corner ahead of them running towards them. The General raced off down the hall, the guards in hot pursuit.

***

‘I think we got them all,’ the General told Franks as he sat down. Franks visible relaxed at the news. ‘Are you sure?’ The General turned to him and looked him in the eye before asking, ‘You said twenty-three eggs right?’
‘Yes. Twenty-three eggs equals twenty-three facehuggers.’
‘Well then we got them all. I made sure that we had them all. We counted twenty-three facehuggers. Thirteen of those were already hugging some faces.’
‘You did what you had to do General,’ Franks remarked. The General only looked at him.

‘What about the Queen?’, Franks calmly asked. Where did you find her?’
‘Right where you left her.’
‘What?’, Franks asked surprised.

The General lit up a cigar, taking his time before answering. ‘She never left her cell, only the facehuggers did. The hole the acid had made was only big enough for the facehuggers’

‘Surely with her strength she could have made the hole bigger or something?’, Franks said sounding strangely disappointed.

A sudden thought came over him. ‘Did you kill her?’
The General took a drag of his cigar. Blowing out the smoke he answered, ‘Of course.’

‘Jesus Christ General, do you realise what you’ve just done? You’ve blown everything. All our research was for nothing,’ came Franks outburst. The General stood up and grabbed Franks shirt yanking him close, ‘Listen you little #$@*%, thirteen people died here today and all you’re worried about is your research. For fucks sake man what about all my soldiers who died capturing that mother #$@*% monster. Don’t you care about these people’s lives?’

Before Franks could answer, a guard bolted into the room. ‘We have a problem.’
‘What kind of a problem?’
‘The worst kind.’

The General let Franks go. ‘Okay, let’s hear it.’
The guard readied himself to speak. ‘Well, when the alarm went off, the guards on the surface shut everything up, by the book. They were watching all of their equipment, all of their sensors. Something set off a motion detector on the outer perimeter.’

Franks looked worried. The General calmly asked, ‘Do they know what it was?’ The guard took a breath and then answered. ‘They ran everything through the sensors. It was the right size to be a facehugger but they weren’t sure. They had heard that we had got them all so they asked me to recount the eggs to make sure that there were only twenty-three.’

The General took a step toward the guard, alarm showing on his face. ‘And...’
‘And, we found another one. There was a twenty-fourth egg.’

The General sat down, his head in his hands. Franks said, ‘There couldn’t have been. We counted twenty-three eggs.’
The guard looked pale. ‘We think that when she detached herself from her eggsac, she laid one more, just like you said.’

‘That’s why she stayed put,’ the General muttered.
‘What?’
‘She stayed in her cell to lay the last egg. While we were all out chasing down the facehuggers, she laid that one. We didn’t know anything about it.’

Franks looked at the General. ‘So now what do we do?’ The General didn’t look anywhere but lost in his own nightmare. ‘That one facehugger could take over the entire planet. There’s only one thing we can do,’ he said turning to Franks, ‘we have to find it, and destroy it.’

END OF CHAPTER THREE

[alvspr]

CHAPTER FOUR

‘When you are in enemy territory, you know nothing,’ Presario lectured to the marines sitting in front of him. ‘You have no idea of what the enemy is capable of doing. All you can rely on is your training, your instinct and your fear.’

Presario walked over to a table and picked up a pulse rifle. Holding it out he said, ‘Just because you have one of these that doesn’t make you invincible. You must accept your own mortality, you must accept that anything, even the most unpredictable, outrageous thing can happen, before you can accept victory. I don’t believe in relying on luck.’

Presario had gone from combat soldier to lecturer. He didn’t know why the General had given him this assignment. He thought the General was trying to give him some time off to get over what had happened.

There was a knock on the door. ‘Come,’ Presario said. A man entered with a mobile phone. Holding it out to Presario he said, ‘It’s the General, Sergeant.’ Presario took the phone with a, ‘Thank you.’

‘Yes sir,’ he said into the phone. The marines were watching him, curious as to what this phone call meant.

Presario listened to the General. As he listened, a look of fear came over his face. With the phone still to his ear he turned his head and looked over his shoulder at the marines.

***

The room was a hive of activity. People raced around everywhere, trying to do one thing or another. They were all on a mission. One they could not fail.

The General and Franks were hunched over a map. It was a map of the outlying area with the towns marked on it.

Presario walked into the room and was momentarily startled by all the activity. He walked up to the General and with a salute he said, ‘Good morning General.’
The General looked up and almost with a sigh of relief he returned the salute. ‘Ahh, Presario I’m glad you’re here. How’re the men? Are they up to the task?

Presario eyed the General and looked like he was going to say something. He took a breath and answered, ‘They’re the best I’ve seen. If they can’t do it, then no one can.’ The General acknowledged his answer with a nod of his head.

Franks looked at the General and then at Presario. He asked the General, ‘Have you been planning for this?’
The General answered with a determined look on his face, ‘You bet I have.’ Presario said nothing.

‘Here’s the plan Presario,’ the General said. ‘We’re going to be keeping an eye on the news. We’re going to be looking for missing persons. Anyone that shows up missing, you’re going to go in and suss it out. Find out all you can, see if you can find out if it was our science project.’
‘Yes sir,’ Presario replied.

The General took a step toward him. ‘Presario, we want to keep this low key. We don’t want anyone finding out. The public doesn’t need to know about this. Is that understood?’
‘Yes sir,’ Presario said, clearly not happy about it.
‘Good.’

The General turned around and picked up a piece of paper from the table. ‘Here,’ he said, holding it out for Presario, ‘this is a list of some missing people, go and find out what you can.’ Presario took the piece of paper and without looking at it, he put in his pocket.

‘Now, the time of escape was 20:00 hours so any thing that went missing before that time you can strike off. If we have any chance of keeping this under wraps, you better get going. We’ll let you know the second we find anything else.’

The General held out his hand. ‘Good luck Sergeant.’ Presario looked the General in the eyes. ‘I don’t believe in luck,’ he said and turned and walked out without shaking the General’s hand.

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Four Continued...

***

The little girl watched the fire as it freely gave off its warmth and light. She was hugging her knees to her chest. She had something in her hand that she was rubbing gently. An old man sat opposite her, also sharing in the warmth of the fire.

‘So Rebecca, how’s school going?’, the old man asked. Rebecca looked up and smiled. ‘Oh, it’s alright. I got an A in maths,’ she boasted.
‘Good for you. What grade are you in now?’, he asked.
‘Five,’ Rebecca answered.
The old man saw that she had something in her hand and asked, ‘What’ve ya got there?’

Rebecca looked away from the fire to what she had in her hand. ‘It’s my necklace,’ she said as she handed it over to him. Rebecca’s grandfather reached out and took it from her small hand.

‘It’s a pretty one. What kind of bird is this?’, he asked.
‘It’s a dove. It means peace.’
‘It sure does,’ her grandfather answered as he handed it back to her.

He looked at his watch. ‘Time for bed,’ he announced. Rebecca looked mournful. ‘Can’t we stay up a little longer?’, she pleaded. He shook his head. ‘Come on now, what did I tell you. You have to go to bed now so...’
‘So I can save my strength for tomorrow,’ she finished. ‘It’s just that, I have scary dreams.’

The old man looked sympathetic. ‘Hey now, you just keep that necklace next to you when you go to sleep. A dove means peace, that also goes for a peaceful sleep.’ Rebecca looked at her grandfather and then back at the necklace in her hand. ‘Ok,’ she said resigning to the fact that she was going to have to go to bed.

The old man stood up and was about to help Rebecca up when he heard a noise. He turned towards the noise and asked, ‘Did you hear that?’ Rebecca looked where he was looking. ‘No. What was it?’

He moved away from the campsite, towards where he heard the noise. ‘It sounded like something moving through the scrub.’ He didn’t sound worried, only a little curious.

Rebecca moved up beside him and peered out into the darkness. ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ she said. And then it leapt onto her face. She fell to the ground without getting out a scream.

Rebecca’s grandfather stared in horror. He knelt down, weeping, not knowing what this thing was attached to his granddaughters face. ‘Rebecca! Rebecca! Can you hear me?’, he screamed as he shook her. He then tried to grab the spider looking creature but stopped as he noticed it tightening its tail around her throat.

He didn’t know what to do. He was crying. This couldn’t be happening he thought. He was panicking which wasn’t a good thing for him to do in his condition.

He picked her up and started running. Darkness enveloped him as he ran away from the campsite. Branches smashed into him as he ran through the scrub. He knew this was dangerous but through his mad sheer panic, he couldn’t think.

It didn’t take him long to fall to the ground, Rebecca slipping out of his arms. He rolled over onto his back, clutching his chest, gasping for breath. The pain shooting through his chest was too much. In his panic he forgot his medication back at the campsite.

In this, his final moment on Earth, he looked over at Rebecca. She was lying on the ground with some hideous looking creature attached to her face. He reached over with one arm, pain engulfing him, and held her hand in his. ‘I’m sorry little one,’ he whispered.

***

Presario stared at the setting sun, deep in thought. So far they had found nothing. They had been searching for three and a half days now and still nothing. Presario knew that that couldn’t be a good thing.

He was standing in a park in a quiet little suburban town. A marine came running up to him. ‘Sergeant,’ she said, ‘you’d better come take a look at this.’ Presario looked at her a moment longer, ran his hand through his hair as he looked at the ground, ‘Here we go,’ was all he said.

***

The door opened and the woman that stared back at Presario did so with a look that told him that she was not going to take any bullshit.

‘Good evening ma’am,’ Presario began, ‘my name’s Presario and I’m from the United Systems Military. Do you mind if I come in?’

The woman stared at him. He could see that she had been crying. ‘Sure,’ she said as she held the door open for him. Presario entered and followed her into the lounge room.

‘Ma’am, I just want to begin by saying,’
She cut him off in mid sentence, ‘What the hell’s the army doing here?’ Presario was surprised. He had expected the question but he somehow knew that she wasn’t going to take his bullshit answer like everyone else had been.

‘Just routine,’ Presario replied.
‘And what’s that got to do with my daughter?’ Presario swallowed before answering. ‘Nothing. Listen, we were here anyway so my CO told me to hot tail it on down here when he heard that your daughter was missing. How long’s your father and daughter been missing?’

She seemed to retract her claws at the question. ‘About a day and a half. they were due back around lunch time yesterday.’
‘When was the last time you saw them?’
‘Three days ago.’

Presario sat in the chair, assimilating the information. ‘Do you know where they went?’ The woman lit a cigarette but didn’t drag on it. She seemed worried. Quite understandable under the circumstances.

‘They went camping. My father always takes my daughter camping. They both love it. I was never an outdoor person myself.’

‘Ma’am, if we had you look at a map, could you tell us where your father and daughter like to camp?’
‘There’s a million camp sites where they go. You could walk within five feet of them and miss them.’

Presario genuinely looked concerned for the poor woman who was trying her best not to break down in front of him. ‘Ma’am, there’s a lot of people in the army and we’ll check each and everyone of those campsites for you. Don’t you think it’s worth a shot?’

She looked at him. He saw in those eyes something that he couldn’t put his finger on. There was something there that was screaming at him. She had a way about her.


‘What’d you say your name was again?’, she asked him.
‘Presario. David.’ She looked at him. Looked into his eyes. She seemed to read into them. ‘Susan Ryder. Nice to meet you David,’ she said.

He hoped that they would find her father and daughter safe and sound.

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Four Continued...

***

The flies buzzed around the dead mans face as it lay in the dirt. The stink was unbearable. A foot stepped down in front of his face. ‘Do we know the cause of death?’, Presario asked someone.

There were marines everywhere. They had found the campsite with a little hassle. It had only taken them a day and a half to find it. What they found was not promising.

An empty campsite, a dead body about two hundred meters away and, footprints. Too small to be made by the old man that lay dead on the ground. His granddaughter?

‘Not sure yet. I’m guessing heart attack,’ the med-tech replied. Presario nodded as his eyes took in the sight of the dead body. It was him alright. Susan’s father. That meant that her daughter Rebecca was still missing.

He had sent some trackers on, following the track that Rebecca had made. The trackers told him what had happened. That the old man ran through the woods, obviously carrying something heavy and fell over right where he lay.

What he carried was Rebecca. What really worried him was that they told him Rebecca didn’t move for quite some time and then, got up and started running. He didn’t think they would catch her in time. In fact, he thought she was already dead. It was amazing what the trackers could do just by looking at the ground.

He turned away not wanting to look at the body anymore. A marine ran up to him. ‘Sergeant,’ she said holding a small bottle out for him to take, ‘have a look at this.’ Presario took the bottle and read the label. ‘For Heart Condition.’ He looked at the med-tech and handed the bottle to him. ‘There you go,’ he said as he walked back towards the campsite.

‘Golding, get me in touch with the General, I have some bad news to tell him.’

This was all going to hell he thought. He didn’t like it one bit that the General had lied to him. Now he was on a mission to stop anyone else from getting hurt. Unfortunately, he was too late for Rebecca and her grandfather.

How was he going to tell her. What would he tell her. He just didn’t know. He stopped. He saw something lying in the dirt. He reached down to pick it up. It was a necklace with a white dove on it. Obviously a childs necklace as the loop was to small for an adult. Rebecca’s necklace. He wondered how it had fallen off of her.

‘Here ya go sir,’ Golding said holding out the radio mike for him. Snapping out of his thoughts he put the necklace in his pocket and took the mike from Goldings outstretched hand. ‘General I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
‘Yes Presario, I’m listening.’

Presario took a breath closed his eyes and said, ‘We believe the facehugger got a little girl sir. Her Grandfathers dead. Died of a heartattack and we’re still looking for the girls body.’

‘How do you know it was our project?’
‘Call it a hunch sir. Our trackers took off down the way the girl went after she laid in the dirt for half a day.’

There was a pause. Presario looked around at the marines doing their jobs. Cleaning up the campsite, looking for any clues that might fill them in on the situation.

‘Presario, I want you to bring everything here. The body, everything. We need to make sure of what the man died of.’

Presario clenched his teeth, took a breath and relaxed a little before replying. ‘Yes sir. If you don't mind sir, I’m going to take a detour out to the Ms Ryder’s house to inform her of her fathers death.’
‘No,’ the General almost shouted. ‘I mean not yet Presario. We don’t want anyone asking questions just yet.’

‘What?’, Presario stated.
‘You will not go anywhere near that woman is that understood Presario. We will tell her in due course but for now, you haven’t found anything. As far as she is concerned, her father and daughter are still missing. Do I make myself perfectly clear Presario?’

‘Yes sir.’
‘Good. Now call me once you find out anything else.’
‘Of course sir.’

Presario turned the radio off and walked towards the jeep, clearly not happy with the situation.

***

‘BEAR! BEAR WHERE ARE YOU?’, the boy yelled. He was standing at his back fence, the gate open. Their back fence was a border to the forest. He was screaming for his dog to come back. There was no real worry in his voice as he would often let Bear roam around the forest but he would always return, having scared the living daylights out of the local wildlife.

The boys father came out and walked up to him. ‘Can you see him?’, he asked, putting his arm around him.
‘No,’ the child replied.
‘Well, come on in. Bear always comes home, for a feed,’ he said while turning him around towards the house.

They started walking back towards the house. ‘Have you done your homework?’, the father asked. ‘Not yet,’ the boy replied.
‘Well you better finish your homework before dinner OK.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

They went inside the house, walking past Bear’s kennel.

***

The horse landed running, the rider urging it on. It was early evening and the night was turning out to be quite warm. They were in the woods galloping down one of the tracks between the trees. She was a good rider and rode with confidence. The horse was a magnificent animal.

They galloped down the track as safe as the night would allow. Suddenly the horse reared up, the rider almost falling off. The horse was neighing and stamping the ground, scared.

‘What’s wrong girl?’, the rider asked patting the horses’ neck trying to sooth it. She was scared because her horse was a well trained horse and would usually obey her commands. ‘Girl, what’s wrong? What are you afraid of?’

The horse started to try and turn in circles, not knowing which way to run. Then the alien reached down from the tree above and snatched the rider from the saddle. She screamed as she felt herself being lifted up into the trees away from her beloved horse.

***

‘I don’t care if I am just a Sergeant, I’m telling you you’re wrong,’ Presario screamed at the General.

They were in the command centre where they were running their search from. With little luck so far. Presario was furious that they were still trying to cover everything up. More people were going to die. He knew it as well as he knew the sun would rise the next day.

‘Be careful Presario,’ the General angrily replied. ‘May I remind you that you were a part of this mission in the beginning.’
‘More people are going to die if you don’t evacuate the town. General, you’ve seen these things in action, you of all people should realise the danger we’re all in,’ Presario pleaded.

The General eyeballed him. Who did this guy think he was? Was he not the General of the United Systems Military. This guy was just a Sergeant. A Sergeant by rank due to the General.

Calmly but with authority the General spoke, ‘I know very well the danger we’re all in. No one will find out about what’s gone on here and if that means a few people need to die, then so be it.’

Presario was stunned. Not only by what was said but by the look the General was giving him. He found it hard to catch his breath.

Just then a soldier came bursting into the room, ‘General, we have a problem.’ The General looked back at Presario who looked right back. Presario lowered his head and closed his eyes. Under his breath he said, ‘Here we go.’

END OF CHAPTER FOUR.

[alvspr]

CHAPTER FIVE

John rolled over and opened his eyes. It was in the middle of the night and it was stinking hot. They couldn’t afford an air conditioner so they were stuck with a simple fan.

He was a little worried about his son. Bear, their dog, didn’t come home earlier that night for a feed. He knew his son was close to that dog and was worried how he would react if Bear never came back.

He got up out of bed, his wife rolling over in tired annoyance of being woken in the middle of the night. He walked out of their room and down the hallway towards the kitchen.

The heat was starting to get to him. He needed a drink. He walked into the dining room and bumped his hip on the table. ‘Ah. Stupid fucking glass table. Shit!’

He limped his way to the refrigerator and opened the door. As he looked for something cool to drink the light from the refrigerator illuminated an alien hanging from the roof right behind him. Unmoving. Silent.

Its head began to move ever so slightly. John reached in and grabbed a can of drink. He pulled the refrigerator door close just as the alien reached down for him.

He and his family would not have to worry about the heat anymore.

***

Presario hated hospitals. Ever since he was a boy. He stayed as far away from them as he could get. Now he was walking right into one. Along with the General.

They were following a doctor through endless passageways and corridors. They came to a door with a security guard. The door had a sign above it. ‘Physicatric Ward.’ Presario couldn’t think of a worse place to go. Yes he could. He was the only that had come back alive.

The doctor turned to them and started talking to them with out going through the door. ‘The police brought him in. He was apparently running down a street screaming with blood all over him. Not his blood mind you. The police are investigating. Can I ask what your involvement in all this is?’, the doctor asked. The General didn’t even bother to look at him as he pushed the door open. ‘No you may not. Presario.’

They entered the room leaving the doctor standing there shaking his head. There were four beds but only one of them was occupied. Strapped to the bed so he couldn’t move was the man the doctor said had been running down the street screaming. Covered in blood.

He was awake but obviously scared. The General walked up beside the bed. Presario stayed back at the foot of the bed. ‘Hi there son,’ the General said. ‘We’re here to help.’ The man moved his head slightly to look at the General.

‘I told them it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me, but they wouldn’t listen. I would never do that, no one could. It was hideous.’ He was rambling. The General tried to calm him down. ‘Shh now, tell me what happened.’

‘We were fixing the pipes, just fixing the pipes when out of nowhere this, this giant bug with teeth the size of a fucking Bowie knife leaps out of one and starts chompin’ into everyone. I don’t know if anyone else got out or not but it wasn’t me. I told them, ya gotta believe me it wasn’t me.’ He kept rambling as the General glanced to Presario who had opened the cabinet up to see what belongings the man had with him.

‘Shh. I believe you,’ the General said trying to calm him down. Presario held up the clothes that were in the cupboard. There was a company patch on the chest: ‘City Council Sewage Worker.’

Presario walked up to the General and whispered into his ear, ‘General I think we’ve found what we needed to find.’

When they got back outside Presario said, ‘He was a sewage worker. They were working in the sewage pipes.’

‘That could prove a problem,’ the General replied. ‘Those sewage pipes lead everywhere. That’s a fucking maze.’ Presario saw his moment, saw the General was weakening so he pressed his attack. ‘General, we have to save these people’s lives. We have to go public.’

‘No!’, the General said turning front on to Presario. ‘We will not go public do you understand me.’
‘General you can’t hide this forever,’ Presario screamed back.
‘I won’t need to if you do your job. Do you understand?’

Presario looked away. ‘Yes sir.’
‘Good. Now find out exactly where this man was attacked and see if you can dig anything up.’
‘Yes sir,’ Presario said turning away to walk down the hall.

‘Oh and Presario,’ the General called. Presario stopped and turned around. ‘Be careful who you speak too.’

***

Ryder was sitting in a chair in her kitchen, staring at the floor. A cigarette was in her hand. She hadn’t ashed the cigarette and it was threatening to fall to the floor.

She was lost in her thoughts. Her father and daughter were missing and she still hadn’t heard anything from that no good marine. She had thought he was sincere. The police had just been doing their job. Asking the same old questions with no emotion but the marine actually looked liked he cared.

The door buzzer went and she only just heard it. She got up to answer it.

She opened the door and Presario was standing there looking a little sympathetic. ‘Hi ya Ryder. May I come in?’

She stood aside to let him in hoping he was the bearer of good news but fearing the worst. ‘Have you found anything?’, she tentatively asked.

Presario turned around and looked at her. Looking genuinely sad he spoke in a sympathetic voice. ‘Yeah, yeah I did.’ He reached out and took her hand in his. He then placed something in it and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked down at her hand and saw the necklace.

Ryder sat there not looking at Presario but at her daughters necklace. A single tear rolled down her cheek. ‘I gave this to her for her birthday. She said she wanted look pretty like her mum. She then started to sob a little. Presario, not knowing what else to do, reached out and held her to him.

Presario hugged her as she remembered her family. Her dead family. He decided then that he would not let anything more happen to her. He would protect her.

‘Listen Ryder,’ he began, ‘there’s something else.’ Ryder looked up at him, her eyes wet with tears. ‘You have to leave town. Don’t ask why, just trust me. It’s going to get a little dicey round here.’

‘What happened to my family,’ she asked knowing full well that Presario knew what had happened. Presario looked at her. Into her brown eyes. ‘I can’t tell you. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want too.’

Ryder could only sit there. Somehow what he said was enough. Presario was genuine and sincere. She believed him. ‘Promise me that you’ll leave. That you’ll go somewhere safe,’ Presario begged. Ryder could only nod.

Presario got up to leave. ‘I have to go.’ Ryder got up with him and walked him to the door. Presario turned around and looked at her. ‘I’m sorry. Truly.’ Ryder, despite the circumstances, gave Presario a small smile. ‘I know.’

Presario looked at her a little longer and then turned and started walking down the hallway. ‘Presario,’ Ryder said. Presario turned around to face her. ‘Just tell me one thing. How long have you known?’
Presario didn’t want to answer this question. But he also didn’t want to lie to her anymore. ‘A few days,’ was all he said. Ryder nodded and Presario turned away and began walking.

To Be Continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Five Continued...

***

Presario couldn’t stand the smell. The dank, rotting smell. He wasn’t the only one who was having problems breathing. His squad of marines were right there backing him up.

They were underground, in the sewage pipes where the worker they found in the hospital said he was working. They were all looking at the entrance to the aliens nest. The resin that the aliens had secreted was all over the walls and pipes. The marines were armed to the teeth. Presario had his trustee rocket launcher strapped to his back.

The only thing that was moving was everyone’s eyes. Presario turned around to look at his marines. He looked at their faces and knew that it was going to be the last time he would see most of them.

He also knew that if they didn’t do this, then many more people would die. That was the only reason he was here. The only reason he was ordering these men to their deaths.

‘Here we go,’ he said under his breath. He turned to one soldier with a specialty weapon. The weapon was a combination of a pulse rifle and a flame thrower in one. It was basically a point weapon. ‘Jones take point,’ he whispered.

Jones heard him all too clearly through the radio. Jones moved forward and the marines followed suit at regular intervals. These were well trained marines. Combat fighting was second nature to them. Yeah so were the thirty odd marines that had already died thought Presario.

They moved ever forward. Silent. Deadly. Two marines already had motion trackers going. Presario didn’t like the fact that they were in amongst the pipes because the motion trackers range was cut to about thirty metres at best.

Jones let off a burst of the flame thrower every now and then so they wouldn’t be walking into an ambush. The light from the flame would glow off the resin on the walls.

Presario noticed that it was getting warmer as they went further in. Further into hell he thought.

They started coming across junctions and intersections that the aliens hadn’t closed off. When Jones got to these he would fire a short burst from the flame thrower to make sure nothing would jump out at them. However the flame would only go out about five feet and the tunnels went on a little longer.

They walked into an open chamber cautiously. Jones saw them first and gasped. The dead bodies hanging from the wall. Chests burst open. He moved further into the chamber so the marines behind could come in. There were so many bodies on the wall. Empty eggs lined the sides of the walls, while dead facehuggers littered the floor.

When Presario entered the chamber and saw the bodies he just stared and clenched his teeth. With hand signals he motioned the squad to take up defensive positions. Once they had done that he spoke into his mike, ‘General, we have a lot of bodies in here. I see at least twenty and that’s just this room. We have way too many bugs down here for us to handle if this is an indication of the numbers.’

‘I read you Presario. How could there be so many bodies? We have been keeping a close eye on the missing person situation,’ the General replied.
‘Sir,’ Presario said leaning closer to a corpse, ‘by the looks of the clothing of most of these people, my guess is that they were homeless. Who would worry about a missing homeless person right General?’

One of the marines noticed something and clicked his fingers to grab Presario’s attention. Presario snapped his head over to the clicking fingers and saw the marine signalling him over. Presario walked over to the marine who just pointed at the wall.

Presario looked up from the marine and saw what he was pointing at straight away. There was no human body. It was a dog with its’ chest burst open. He could see the dogs collar with a tag on it. He reached forward and turned the tag over so he could read it. ‘Bear.’ Presario looked back down at the marine without expression. He turned back away.

‘Ah General, things might be worse then we imagined,’ he said into his mike letting a little more fear into his voice then he hoped, ‘the bugs have started to taking wildlife.’

‘What do you mean? What sort of wildlife?’, came the angry reply. Presario turned around to look back at the dog. ‘Fucking dogs sir.’ He had silence for a reply for a while.

When the reply came it was not what he wanted to hear. ‘Alright Presario, I need you to find out what other animals they’re using. We need to know if it’s just dogs or what. Do you understand?’ Presario looked into the marines eyes, clenched his teeth and said, ‘Yes sir.’

Presario turned to Jones and pointed him onwards. ‘Alright marines, let’s get to it.’ The marines got up from their positions and moved onward. Presario couldn’t stop imagining that they were descending into the fiery pits of hell. The heat didn’t help to alleviate that concern.

As they went through more and more chambers, they began to see less and less humans and more and more animals. Goats, cattle, dogs, cats, anything that seemed to be big enough. That worried Presario quite a lot because the more dead animals and humans they saw, the more aliens there would be. He was amazed at how quickly the bugs had established a nest of this size.

They had been going on like this for quite a while when Jones called for them to stop. ‘Presario, you’d better get up here,’ he said. Presario made his way past the marines until he got to Jones. He noticed that he didn’t even have to tell his squad to take up their defensive positions. They had already done it.

‘What is it Jones?’, Presario asked. Jones looked at him and then looked ahead. Presario looked where Jones was looking. It was hardly recognizable because of the resin left by the aliens but Presario could make it out. ‘A staircase,’ he said looking back at Jones. Eyebrows went up.

Presario didn’t like it one bit. But what was there to like about it. They were already in enemy territory and had been for quite a while. What was an extra few metres going to do.

He nodded his head to Jones, who nodded back. Jones stepped forward towards the staircase. He moved slow. Pulse rifle trained on the staircase ahead. Presario followed out after him.

Jones got to the staircase and aimed his rifle up. He could see a door at the top. He started taking the steps one at a time. Presario waited at the bottom, covering his retreat should he need it.

Jones got to the door and quickly checked to see if it was open by pushing it gently. It was shut. ‘I’m opening the door now,’ he said quietly into his mike. Sweat beaded off his forehead.

He reached out to the door and turned the handle ever so slowly. When the handle had turned all the way he pushed the door forward slightly. In a sudden motion he burst into the room, rifle at the ready.

He had entered a basement to a building and the first thing he noticed was the alien resin didn’t penetrate into the room he was now in. The second thing he noticed was that there was someone in the room, crouched down at some valves. He was wearing a hard hat.

When the workman saw the marine burst into the room he dropped his spanner and put his hands up. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ he said. Jones rifle was aimed at him in a split second. ‘What are you doing here?’, he asked. The workman stammered to get a reply. ‘I’m just checking the valves.’

Just then, a motion tracker signalled movement. That high pitch beep sent shivers down Presario’s’ spine. ‘Movement,’ one of the marines said. Presario took his eyes off the staircase for a second as he looked back towards his squad. It was a second to long.

An alien burst from the wall, hidden amongst the resin, into the room Jones had just entered. Jones spun around but was too late and the alien burst his skull open with its powerful teeth.

Presario turned back around and fired his rifle into the alien. Acid went everywhere, including all over the worker who was still kneeling down in front of the valves. He hadn’t had time to move it had all happened that quick.

The aliens struck. Marines opened fire. Presario spun back around. ‘Marines to me now!’, he screeched. Aliens seemed to come from everywhere as the marines tried to fight their way to freedom.

Four marines made it to where Presario was, shooting his rifle almost blindly into the walls. ‘Up the stairs now!’, Presario ordered. One by one the marines raced up the stairs and over the dead alien, careful not to step in the acid.

The rest of the marines were cut off. Some of them were already dead. Ambushed once again. Grenades went off and Presario watched with deadly horror as the aliens once again killed off the marines with ease.

Amidst the panic he thought that from that point on, he wouldn’t care who it was but he wasn’t going to take orders from anyone again. Nobody deserved to die like this.

He raced up the stairs after the four marines. He shut the door behind him as raced into the room. Not that any door would stop these things but just having something solid between him and the nightmare was comforting.

The other four marines were there and Presario didn’t waste any time as he pushed past them running down the hall. ‘Come on! Don’t stop,’ he yelled. That was the best thing the marines could have heard at that point and the turned to follow him.

Presario heard the door burst open as he rounded a corner. He could hear the gunfire behind him as he searched for a way out. He came to another staircase with a door at the top with a lock on it. He turned around to cover his marines as they came barrelling down the hallway, aliens in hot pursuit.

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Five Continued...

Presario fired with deadly accuracy past the marines allowing them to run on faster. One of the aliens got to close to one of them and as Presario fired, the acid from the aliens’ wound landed on the leg of the marine.

He screamed and fell over. Presario helped him up onto his feet and up the staircase, one arm holding him up. He shot the lock off the door and kicked it open. Presario raced through first holding the marine up, the others not far behind.

They were in the lobby of a building. Presario could see the street through the front doors. They were in the city. People were there going about their day but were startled to see these four men burst through the door with rifles, one of them bleeding and screaming.

Presario took in the situation instantly. ‘Everybody out know!,’ he screamed as he ran forward dragging the marine with him. Some people panicked and started running while others didn’t know what to think and just stood there looking at each other.

‘Golding watch the door. Marines clear the room,’ Presario was shouting. Golding turned around, training her rifle on the door they had just come through, the other two marines started yelling at everyone to get out.

Aliens came bursting through the door and Golding mowed them down. That got everyone moving. Sheer panic reigned as everyone fought to escape. The marines covering there escape.

Presario didn’t know what happened but aliens started coming from different parts of the building. The marines could barely get them all. They were coming from windows in the floor above, bursting through from the elevator shafts, from other doorways that lead down to the basement, from air conditioning vents, everywhere.

It was hell rising up from the depths to claim Earth. So much for keeping this whole thing low key thought Presario. For some odd reason, Presario wondered what building they were in. He thought it strange that he would think that at a time like this.

And then he saw it. It suddenly all made sense. How the aliens could have made a nest so big and so quickly without them knowing. The sign he saw said ‘Travel Bureau.’ They were in the travel centre of the city. Buses, trains and trams went to and from this building everyday. They must have been walking through parts of the subway system.

People travelling to the city would get off here and disappear so easily. It would be even worse if they brought pets with them. They were looking for missing persons from the local area, not from other cities. That also meant that the aliens could be anywhere on the planet by now. Nowhere was safe.

Then he saw Ryder, almost at the same time that she saw him. He made a beeline for her. ‘What’s going on?’, she asked. He started pushing her towards the door and hopefully towards safety. ‘What are you doing here?’, he screeched. Ryder raced through the door and into the street before answering him. ‘Taking your advice!’

If inside was chaos, outside was mayhem. People were running for their lives as aliens were running amuck in the streets. They were everywhere. The marines didn’t stop, they kept moving. Aliens flew at them and Presario had to literally drop the marine he was carrying so he could defend himself and Ryder.

Ryder saw the rifle the marine on the ground had in his arms and reached down for it. Presario didn’t even notice as he was too occupied in keeping the aliens at bay. Ryder grabbed the rifle out of the marines’ hands and was surprised at how light it was.

She looked at the marine with questioning eyes and he said, ‘just pull the trigger darlin’.’ She nodded and spun up, put the rifle to her shoulder, aimed for the nearest alien and let rip.

Presario looked over at her but didn’t have time to say anything as the aliens were coming on strong. ‘We gotta go,’ he yelled. Presario paused to reload his rifle. He looked back at the building they had escaped from, where most of the aliens were coming from. He made a sudden decision.

He unstrapped his rocket launcher. He had already loaded it before they left on the mission. What he had loaded it with was nothing short of the finger of god strapped to his back. It was probably the most powerful handheld rocket ever made.

He dropped to a knee, put the rocket launcher over his shoulder, aimed and fired straight at the building. The explosion knocked everyone off their feet and all but toppled the building.

Rubble littered the streets. It was strangely quiet. Presario and the marines stood up and brushed themselves off. Presario held a hand out for Ryder. She graciously took it.

They looked back at the now empty shell of a building. Presario looked around, searching the shadows. ‘We gotta get out o’ here,’ he said as he once again looked back at the building.

Ryder came up to stand beside him. ‘You wanna tell me what’s going on now?’

END OF CHAPTER FIVE.

[alvspr]

CHAPTER SIX

Six Months Later

New York City. Normally a hive of activity. Now, it was just a hive. An alien hive. The bugs had taken it over within two months of the alien war. There were still survivors living there, having adapted to the conditions of practically living within an alien nest.

The bugs had entered the city from below. Through the sewer and subways they came, destroying everything in their path. The buildings were barely standing. They were the only things that remained of what became to be called, ‘The Massacre of New York’.

The military did very well to get a lot of people out considering that they had no idea of what they were dealing with. Presario, and what was left of his squad, led them into the battle. Suffering heavy losses, they had to give up. In the end, it was flee or die.

A dropship flew slow, twenty feet off the streets below. Its searchlights on and cameras rolling, it was searching the rubble of the city below for any signs of survivors. It was ready to blast anything that didn’t remotely look human.

From one hundred kilometres away, Presario watched what the dropships cameras were seeing. Memories trying to force their way to the surface of Presario’s mind. He turned away from the screen to face the room he was in.

Headquarters. Maps on walls. People running everywhere. Radios blasting away. In the middle of it all stood the General. He was talking to a few people. Presario stood up to go join the conversation.

The General looked up at Presario as he came over. ‘Well, they’ve quarantined Australia. Nothing in or out,’ he said. Presario nodded as he took the piece of paper the General handed him.

‘What about our boys in the West?’, Presario asked. The General looked at him and shook his head. ‘We just can’t get anywhere with this,’ Presario mumbled. The General looked up at him.

‘We’re doing all we can Presario. We’re going to step up our attack and maybe we’ll get lucky.’ Presario turned on the General, rage blasting through his emotional shields.

‘Step up our attack. Sir, all we’re doing is losing ground, barricading our way off from these things and they’re still winning. It’s been six months and there are already major nests on every continent. You just said Australia was quarantined, you can’t step up your attack. You’ve got to evacuate the planet’

For the first time the General lost it. ‘No!’ Presario was taken aback. The look in the Generals eyes was not one of anger or hate. It was one of fear. ‘I will not be the man responsible for losing Earth. Do you get it? The only other people that came close to losing Earth was that Altech mob when the Lacerta plague hit. Do you remember that from your history books?’ For once Presario understood what was driving the General. He wasn’t out to just be known as a great leader. He was out not to be known as a bad one.

‘Yeah I remember the Lacerta Plague. Altech was a big pharmaceutical company that developed the Lacerta virus to sell to the military.’
‘That’s right. There was no real enemy to fight. Just a #$@*% virus. The fight was in the hospitals. This is somewhat different. This is a lot #$@*% worse. Already twice as many people have been killed by these things than that virus.’

Presario looked at his feet. ‘I’m sorry General,’ was all he said. The General cooled a bit. ‘That’s ok Presario. You ready for some bad news?’ Presario looked up at him and smiled. ‘Sure.’

‘We’ve been asked by some very important people to do something very dangerous. They want us to go into one of the major nests, and eradicate it.’
‘What?’
‘They think it will boost moral for the soldiers. And everyone else for that matter.’

Presario took it in. ‘Ok. I guess I’m up for that.’ The General nodded, glad that Presario accepted the news without a fight. ‘You’ll lead a squadron of marines and you can take Ryder too if she wants to go. She’s proved that she can handle herself on more than one occasion.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to stop her. She’s taken a personal vendetta against the bugs. So which lucky nest gets to be eradicated?’ The General looked at Presario, an eyebrow arching up. ‘It’s your ass.’

Presario looked at the map on the table, closed his eyes and stabbed it with his finger. It rested on Sydney, Australia. They both looked at each other, then back at the map, knowing that it was going to be a long and hard war.

To Be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Six Continued...

***

Sydney Harbour. Once a beautiful city. The Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the harbour itself. It was all so beautiful. Now one wouldn’t recognize it. The Opera House had been turned into a nest. The aliens’ secretion covering the entire building that was once white, was now black.

The city had come a long way since the 21st century, rivalling any other city in the world. Having mostly escaped the catastrophe of the Lacerta plague, it benefited by becoming a leading city in restoring the world to its former glory.

It, however, did not escape the aliens. They came in their thousands, bringing death in their wake. Now it was going to be the first city that the United Systems Military attempted to eradicate the aliens from without doing any more damage.

Presario and his team of marines had been in Australia for the past two weeks, having been allowed to pass through the quarantine. The entire country was overridden with the aliens. The only clean places left were military fortifications which probably weren’t going to last long.

The marines that were going to be going into the city had been studying the layout of the land and getting all the knowledge they could about what was waiting for them. Presario was giving his last briefing to the crowd of marines in the mess hall.

‘Ok, so we’re going to be going in at 0800 as these things mostly come out at night,’ he said. One marine sitting in the crowd turned to his mate, eyes rolling, ‘yeah right, ‘mostly’.’ Presario looked at him but didn’t say anything. He turned back to the crowd. ‘Any last questions?’ He looked around waiting for someone to raise their hand. No one did. ‘All right then dismissed.’ The marines stood up and started filing out of the hall, quietly. There was no talking, only thinking. Thinking about the day ahead. Most of them believed it would be their last.

Ryder was there next to Presario looking determined. ‘You ok?,’ she asked. Presario looked at her, ‘Yeah I’m ok. Just…,’ Ryder stepped forward closer, ‘I know Presario. I know.’

A marine came up to them. ‘Lieutenant. Would you come with me please.’ Presario looked over at the private. ‘Sure. What’s up?’
‘I think it’s better if you come and look.’ Presario glanced back to Ryder before following the marine.

They entered into the vehicle garage. Presario and Ryder could see a bunch of people all over by an APC. He spotted the General there too. They walked on over. ‘Presario,’ the General said when he saw them coming over, ‘come take a look at this.’

Presario and Ryder looked down to find an alien body. The General kept talking as Presario bent down to take a closer look. ‘A scout patrol found it like this and brought it in. What do you make of it?’

Presario didn’t answer straight away. He studied the alien body. There was a massive hole in the ‘chest’ of the alien, like it had been shot with a powerful weapon. He reached forward tentatively and touched the side of the wound.

‘The wound’s all fused and quarterized,’ Presario stated, almost to himself. The General said, ‘no powder burns, no shrapnel.’ Presario couldn’t understand it. He turned looking up at the General, ‘what the hell could’ve done this?’

The General shrugged, making a face. ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’ Presario looked back at the alien. ‘I wouldn’t have a clue,’ he stated.
‘Well whoever did this I hope they keep doing it,’ the General said. Presario stood. ‘You two better go get some sleep. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.’
Presario nodded. ‘In the meantime, we’ll see if we can’t find out what did this,’ the General said.

Presario and Ryder turned to leave. ‘Good luck tomorrow Presario.’ Presario turned around and looked at the General, the signs of a smile showing on his face, ‘I told you I don’t believe in luck.’ The small smile faded and he turned and walked out with Ryder.

***

The dropships flew in low over the treetops. There were at least a dozen of them. The marines inside were tense, adrenalins pumping. Presario was leaning back against the wall, eyes closed. Ryder was next to him, eyes alert and taking in everything.

Ryder turned towards Presario. ‘Presario,’ she said. He didn’t move. She nudged him with her elbow. ‘Presario, wake up.’ Presario started. Not in a jumpy fashion, but in a smooth well trained soldier fashion. He nodded at her. He unlocked his safety bar and stood up.

‘Ok marines,’ he addressed, ‘two minutes.’ He looked down at Ryder and then back up at the door. ‘Here we go.’

They were going to land just outside the harbour, in a spot that had the least amount of alien activity. They were then going to walk in and destroy the bulk of the nest and retake the city without blowing the whole place up. At least that was the theory.

The dropships circled before landing and depositing their cargo. Once they had landed, the APC’s drove out of their bellies and away, the dropships taking off the instant the APC’s were clear. They would circle the city and provide air support for the marines on the ground.

The APC’s stopped after a while and the marines filed out, pulse rifles at the ready. Each marine knew their duty, what they had to do. And each marine was part of a squad and as a whole the squad knew what to do. In turn the squad was part of the entire force made up of many squads that each had their own orders but contributed to the whole.

So there they were, like a well-oiled machine. They walked in silence using nothing but hand signals to communicate. Any general would have been proud to call these soldiers theirs.

Presario and Ryder walked on through the scrub, each doing their bit. Although Ryder was not part of the military system, the soldiers respected her. She had on more then one occasion saved many lives and had proved herself to be a natural leader. The marines took orders from her, even those of rank. Ryder gave orders and just expected everyone to follow them. They always did.

They walked on, around trees and through mud, on their way to the city. To the nest. Presario started to get an uneasy feeling. Like he was being watched. At first he thought it was just because of the situation. Hell, who wouldn’t have an uneasy feeling when entering an alien nest? The feeling didn’t go away and it was a different feeling to when he had fought the aliens before.

He stopped. All the marines behind him stopped instantly, waiting to see if there was any trouble. He turned around and looked up into the tree branches behind him. He couldn’t see anything, but he was sure there was something there.

***

The predator had watched the dropships come in from afar. It had watched the APC’s roll out and it had watched the marines make their way towards the city. It had stayed in the trees above their heads and watched them walk no less then twenty feet under it without even knowing it was there.

Even though the marines were all wearing camouflage, it could see them easily with its infrared vision. It waited, watching, knowing that a battle was coming between the marines and the bugs. It would wait to see what would happen.

One of them stopped. The marines following all stopped instantly. The one that had stopped first turned around. The predator watched, the marine looking straight at it, yet it still didn’t see. The marine was about thirty feet away. The marine knew the predator was there, but just couldn’t see it.

To Be Continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Six Continued...

***

Ryder turned to see where Presario was looking. She turned back to Presario. He looked at her and she shook her head to indicate that she couldn’t see anything.

‘What the hell are you?,’ Presario whispered to himself as he stared up into the branches. Even Ryder who was right next to him could hardly hear what he said. He turned around and moved on, feeling very uncomfortable.

***

The predator watched the marine slowly turn around and walk on. It would follow them and watch. Watch the battle that was going to take place. It would see how these marines handled themselves when faced with such a deadly foe.

***

They walked ever on, always ready, always alert with APC’s in tow. They were in the city now, walking in amongst the rubble of the leftover buildings. Eyes were searching every corner, every shadow, every window. However, everyone knew that the real fight was going to take place underground, in the basements and subways and tunnels of the city.

That was where the bugs liked to nest. But that wouldn’t stop them from coming out, above ground. They were heading towards the heart of the city. They were going to enter one of the buildings there and fight their way into the nest.

As they were going through the streets, marines were looking down allies to see if they were about to be ambushed. One marine looked down one, saw nothing and moved on. As the marine left, red eyes suddenly appeared. The predator’s eyes glowed. The marine had been not two feet away and hadn’t seen it.

Presario’s bad feeling hadn’t gone. He was feeling more and more uncomfortable the further they went. He knew something bad was going to happen. Something out of the ordinary. His eyes were continually searching the rooftops and high windows of the buildings they were passing. He never saw anything.

The predators could see him though. If Presario had of been looking at a certain place at a certain time, he would have seen something like a silhouette jump from building to building. He would have seen silhouettes all over the place. That’s if he knew what to look for. He didn’t. He didn’t know the predators were there. He didn’t even know they existed.

He didn’t realise it, but they were being surrounded by lethal killing machines. Sophisticated, intelligent, killing machines.

The marines had already picked a building they were going to enter. They did so in perfect style. They blew out the lobby of the building with rockets. Once the dust and debris had settled, they went in heading for the basement.

It didn’t take them long to see the signs of the aliens’ nest all over the walls. The nest was probably the size of the city, extending all the way out to the outer suburbs. They were hoping that the queen was closer in to the city. They didn’t want to be searching the alien nest for long.

The marines were efficient. Motion trackers running. Nobody had to give any orders, they were all doing their job as if they had been born for it. They began to see the remains of the corpses the bugs had captured for the breeding. Dogs, cats, sheep, goats, cattle and of course human. Basically anything that was big enough was caught and impregnated

The marines running point were blasting away with their flamethrowers every few minutes, not wanting to be taken by surprise. Presario still had that uneasy feeling. He couldn’t shake it.

Just then one of the motion trackers started its terrifying pitch, signalling to everyone that it had detected movement. ‘Marines dig in,’ Presario whispered into his radio mike.

All of the marines took up defensive positions, crouching against the walls of the alien labyrinth. ‘What’s the position?,’ Presario asked. The marine that answered did so with a shaky voice. ‘Ah wait a minute, locking in now. I’m reading twenty three meters straight ahead.’

‘How many?,’ Presario asked in a calm voice.
‘The lock is singular,’ answered the marine. ‘It’s now at twenty meters.’ Presario didn’t expect this. He expected a swarming attack, not this lone bug. Maybe it wasn’t an alien. What else could it be?

‘Marines hold your positions and be ready for anything and keep calling out the distance and let me know if you pick up any other movement,’ Presario ordered. All the marines tensed a little as the marine with the motion tracker kept calling out the distance.

‘Fifteen metres. Twelve. Ten.’ Presario didn’t get it. He should have been able to see it by now. He had a clear line of sight for a least fifteen meters. ‘It’s stopped sir,’ whispered the marine. Presario was breathing heavy. He was sure that an ant could have heard him.

‘Does anyone see it?,’ he asked. No one answered. They would only have answered if they could have seen it. Whatever it was. Presario made a decision. ‘Alright, everybody be alert.’ And then he stood and stepped away from the wall.

To Be Continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Six continued.

Nothing happened. He thought he might have been able to spook whatever was there into moving so one of the marines could see it. He stepped forward cautiously, his heart attempting to burst its way out of his chest.

The motion tracker started making its sound again. ‘Movement. Multiple targets coming in fast. Range twenty six meters,’ the marine said. Presario knew there was something there. He slowly reached up to his eyepiece that allowed him to see in infrared. The marines weren’t already in infrared because they knew the bugs didn’t show up on it.

He flipped his eyepiece over and then he saw it. Standing about two meters in front of him was a humanoid form. A very big humanoid form. It had to have been at least eight feet tall. He flipped his eye piece back off and the form disappeared. It was as if it was invisible.

He flipped his eyepiece back on and there it was. He couldn’t believe it. Whatever it was it was only visible through infrared. All of a sudden he was knocked over as the form rushed forward. It ran past him and he tried to see where it went but his head was reeling from the blow.

It hadn’t tried to kill him. It just wanted to get past him. ‘Multiple targets at eight meters,’ Presario heard the marine say. He realised where he was and righted himself up into a squat. He heard gunfire blasting as the aliens started coming from all directions.

He started picking out his targets and began firing. Almost at once he knew it was hopeless. There were just too many of them. The marines were falling back, retreating under the heavy bombardment of aliens leaping at them. Marines were dying while others were being carried off to be hosts for the facehuggers.

Even under the stress of the situation and the immediate need to survive, Presario couldn’t put that encounter with the invisible humanoid out of his mind. It almost cost him his life as an alien got to close. Luckily Ryder was there and she blasted the alien with rounds from her pulse rifle.

All of a sudden, he saw a marine get blasted almost in two. That was no weapon any of his marines had. He saw another marine go down in the same way. And then he saw the strangest thing. The bugs were getting blasted by the same weapon. The bugs were being cut down in their stride.

This was his chance. Presario screamed into his mike, ‘RETREAT!’ The marines didn’t have to be told twice. They turned and ran for all they were worth. They never would have been able to escape if the mysterious weapon hadn’t started blasting away giving them enough time to turn and run.

Some marines were still going down, both by the bugs and the blue sparkling weapons fire. Presario was the last marine, covering them as much as possible with his rifle. Ryder was just in front. One of the strange blue weapons fire struck the roof of the tunnel they were in, collapsing it.

It cut Presario’s escape off. It had come down between him and Ryder. There was a gap in which Presario could see Ryder turn around and come back. ‘Presario!’ He screamed at her, ‘Go. Get out of here.’ Then he turned to face the aliens coming at him.

He didn’t have to fire a single round as they were still being blown to bits by a force that Presario couldn’t understand. He turned and ran down another tunnel, searching for a way out.

Ryder and the rest of the marines came bursting out into sunlight and started running towards the APC’s. They loaded in and the APC’s took off.

Presario was in his worst nightmare. Trying to find his way out of the aliens’ nest. He had to start firing as he was in another part of the nest, obviously away from whoever was doing the shooting. He began to worry that he would run out of ammunition before he could find a way out.

After what seemed like a lifetime he found a way out. He burst through the door and into the lobby of another building. What he saw there horrified him. He saw about a dozen bodies all stripped of flesh hanging from the ceiling. He stared in shock at what he couldn’t comprehend. Did the bugs do this or was it the new strange force he was sure was a new alien species?

And then he noticed it. As he made his way quickly but respectfully through the bodies he came across one that was pure white. It was one of the bugs. Its exoskeleton was white, not black like it had been bleached. That did it. He turned and ran, trying to put as much distance between himself and the nightmare.

He couldn’t see any of his marines. He started putting distance between him and the building he just escaped from. He couldn’t hear the weapons’ fire anymore. He didn’t know if that made him feel better or not.

When the aliens came bursting out of the building behind him, charging to catch him, he decided that it didn’t make him feel better. He started firing, retreating at the same time. There were just too many and he didn’t have enough ammunition.

When his pulse rifle ran out, he dropped it and ran. He ran knowing that he could not out run them. They were too fast. As he ran he unclipped a grenade from his vest. If he was going to die, then it would be on his terms.

He ran round a corner as fast as he could and there was some debris right in the middle of his path. He jumped, too late. He fell down over the top of the rubble, the grenade falling away from his grasp. He clambered to get it. And then he heard a scream. An alien scream. He couldn’t mistake that sound for anything. He had heard it to many times before.

He heard the strange weapons fire again. He cautiously poked his head up over the rubble he had tripped on. He couldn’t see much as he had ran around the corner but he could certainly hear plenty.

There was an almighty explosion and then nothing. No more aliens screams, no more of that hollow sounding weapons fire. Nothing. He decided that this was his chance to escape. His only and last chance.

He turned and ran. He ran so hard and fast that he didn’t see it. He ran into something. He didn’t know what but it had knocked him on his back. He couldn’t see anything. What did he run into?

Three red dots in the form of a triangle appeared on his stomach. It looked a lot like a targeting dot he noticed. He stayed still, on his back, in utter shock. He was scared out of his mind. He could see a faint outline of a humanoid form standing above him. But that wasn’t all that he could see. He could see the building behind it. He could see through it.

And then the dots started moving up towards his chest. They kept going until they rested on his forehead. And then the form materialised into a solid form. Something he could see and touch.

It definitely wasn’t human. It was holding a spear of some sort, one end of it sticking in the ground like a walking stick. It had a weapon of some kind on its shoulder which, to Presario’s shock, was pointed straight at him. Presario thought it was wearing a mask. He noticed that the creature had skulls strapped to it. They were hanging off of it. Some of the skulls were of the bugs. The big elongated heads were white. He counted three of them. He also noted to his disgust a few human skulls.

Presario waited, expecting to be struck dead any instant. It then did something he least expected. In Presario’s own voice it said, ‘What the hell are you?’ Presario was stunned. That was what he had said in the forest when he had first started to get that uneasy feeling. This creature was what he had been looking at.

Presario didn’t know if the creature expected an answer or not but it, in a slow purposeful way, just walked away. It stepped over the rubble that Presario had tripped over.

Presario turned to watch it and was astounded to see more of the creatures waiting. As they walked away they all became semi-invisible. Presario kept watching until he couldn’t see them anymore, and taking the extra life God had just granted him, got up and ran.

He was lucky he didn’t have to run for long until he saw a dropship. He set off his flare and waited until the dropship landed. It was the one Ryder had bordered. She hadn’t stopped searching for him. The marines on board came running out. ‘Sir are we glad to see you,’ one of them said.

Presario nodded in exhaustion, still in shock of what happened. Ryder looked at him with a questioning look. ‘What did you do?’
‘What do you mean?,’ Presario answered.
‘The explosion. We saw it and came over thinking that’s where you were. Looks like we were right.’
‘Oh that. That explosion was courtesy of the same force that saved our lives in the nest.’

Ryder and the marines knew what he was talking about. They didn’t have a clue as to what had happened down there. ‘Do you know what did that?,’ Ryder asked. Presario looked up at her and nodded. He then looked at the other marines before saying, ‘I’m afraid we have another alien species on the planet. One that is intelligent and capable of thought.’

One of the other marines almost smiled. ‘Did you see them?’ Presario nodded. ‘I had a personal encounter with one of them.’ The marine almost burst wanting to hear more. ‘Well, what does it look like?’

Presario looked up at him, almost looking to hit him. With a touch of annoyance in his voice he answered, ‘Like an ugly mother fucker.’

END OF CHAPTER SIX.

[alvspr]

CHAPTER SEVEN

The child was running. He was as surefooted as a mountain goat. The grass in the field he was in was up to his knees. He was running to the shade of a tree where his elders were.

They were all standing around the body of a dead lion. This primitive tribe of Africans was probably one of the last indigenous tribes on the continent. Technology hadn’t yet caught up with them.

The child reached the group of men standing around the lion. They were all talking in their own dialect, convinced that the gods were angry with them. They had never seen a lion killed like this before.

It’s chest was burst open, the ribs bent outward like it had exploded from the inside.

***

A grass field, invaded by USM marines. They were in an arrowhead formation, pulse rifles almost lazily resting on their arms. The forest line was about 200 meters in front of them.

An APC was rolling along behind them, providing artillery support. It was an overcast day. The marines were looking hot and sweaty. The temperatures were above average for the time of year.

And then it sounded. The motion tracker beeped. The marines had begun to dread the sound of the motion tracker as it often heralded a battle. A battle the marines usually lost.

The marines dropped to the ground as one of them said, ‘Movement at eighty-five meters. Twelve o’clock.’ The marines had begun to expect just about anything as the war with the bugs went on. The bugs could not be predicted. There were no real good strategies to fight them. The bugs were capable of adapting to just about any situation. And they were always relentless.

‘Sixty meters,’ the marine called out. They were tense, eyes searching the horizon for any sign of movement. The marine kept calling out the distance, a little too quickly some thought. Then again, these bugs could move.

‘Fifty, forty, thirty.’ His voice was rising in pitch everytime he called out the distance. ‘Where the hell is it?,’ one of the marines yelled in terror. Eyes were wide in terror as the marine was calling out the distance. ‘Twenty. Fifteen.’

And then one of the marines saw a shadow. It was on the ground kind of like a bird’s shadow. He looked up to see an alien flying. It was flying right towards him. He screamed as he raised his pulse rifle to fire at it. He was too slow.

The alien reached down and plucked him from the ground to carry him off to be a host. The rest of the marines didn’t have time to panic as more of the flying aliens began swooping down, attacking them while they tried to blast them out of the sky.

A few marines were lucky enough to take a few of them out. Unfortunately for some unlucky marines, it began raining acid.

***

A sergeant was yelling. ‘Fire, goddamn it, fire!’ Rifle fire could be heard for miles. A squadron of marines was using a burnt out shell of a car for protection as they laid waste to the aliens charging them.

They had retreated to this point and were afraid to retreat any further for they had nowhere else to go. There were six of them left and they were giving the bugs all they had. They feared it would not be enough.

‘I’m out,’ one of the marines said signifying that he had run out of ammunition. He now had to rely on the others. In the distance, people were fleeing having heard the battle that was raging in their own backyard.

The marines started backing up as the bugs were getting to close. It was a good thing they did because the car they had been using for a shield suddenly exploded as it was hit by something the marines had never seen before.

The explosion killed, or rather destroyed, any aliens that were too close. The sergeant felt rather then saw a presence leap in front of the marines. The aliens started attacking the presence, which the marines could now see as a semi-invisible form.

The form started hacking away at the aliens with what seemed to be spear. The aliens were getting sliced and diced to bits, the acid somehow never seeming to go anywhere near the humanoid form.

The marines just stared in disbelief. They had to back up because the fight was coming closer to them as the predator swung its spear with deadly accuracy. And then it became visible, the marines getting a good look at it.

One marine got to close and he was decapitated before any of them realised. ‘All right marines, we’re leaving,’ the sergeant ordered. The marines, taking one last look at the predator and aliens, turned and ran while one of them was yelling into his mike requesting immediate evacuation from the dropship flying nearby.

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Seven Continued...

***

‘Sir we just got another report of the new xeno’s attacking one of the bugs nest,’ a marine informed the General. ‘Thank you,’ a tired looking General replied. He didn’t know what was happening. It was all going from bad to worse and he knew he was partly responsible for it. Responsible for the deaths of so many lives.

‘Is Presario back yet?’, the General asked. A marine looked up from his clipboard. He was responsible for keeping track of the men in the field. The important men anyway. ‘Not yet sir.’

Presario entered the room, Ryder right behind him. ‘I am now.’ The marine with the clipboard said, ‘Strike that sir, he’s here.’

Presario and Ryder had to fight their way through the melee and turmoil to get to the General. ‘God damn it Presario what’s going on out there. We’re getting reports in from all over the goddamn place. What’s this I’m hearing about another xeno?’

‘It’s true. I saw one of them myself.’ The General stood a little straighter, crossing his arms, looking at both Presario and Ryder. Finally he said, ‘Well, can you describe it, give me anything to go on?’

‘It was invisible,’ Presario started before the General cut in with an understandable comment. ‘Invisible. What do you mean invisible?’ Presario looked around the room at the soldiers and tried to keep his voice low. ‘Well not invisible exactly, it was semi invisible. Like a silhouette. But when it was visible I could see that it had skulls strapped to it.’

The General raised an eyebrow. ‘Skulls. What kind of skulls? Human?’ Presario kept looking around the room. ‘Yes. And bug skulls. It also had dreadlocks and a spear. It looked to be wearing a mask.’

The General was lost in thought. ‘Skulls?’, he asked again. Presario nodded. Presario watched the General who was obviously deep in thought. ‘General?’
The General looked at Presario. ‘There’s something familiar in your description. I’ll have to go and check on something. I just can’t place it but it sounds familiar.’

‘Ok,’ Presario answered. ‘You’ll let us know as soon as you find out anything won’t you?’
‘Yes of course. Now if you’ll excuse me.’ The General went off to look for whatever he was going to look for.

‘What was all that about?’, Ryder asked Presario. Presario watching the Generals retreating back answered, ‘I don’t know. But I’m sure we’ll find out.’

***

Presario was seated at a table, head down reading some files. He was studying the files put together by Franks on Ripleys encounters with the aliens, hoping that it would give him a clue as to how to kill them.

He was flicking pages that had photos of people. Kane, Dallas, Hicks, Hudson. And then he saw one that made him stop.

It was a photo of Ripley. Ellen Ripley. She was young. If only she were here he thought, then she would save them all. Yeah right, as if Ripley could save Earth.

Just then Ryder walked into the room and stood close behind him looking over his shoulder. ‘Ellen Ripley,’ she said. ‘So that’s her.’ Presario looked around at her. ‘Yep, that’s her. One very strong lady.’

Ryder sat down next to him and looked at him, trying to read his mind. ‘What are you doing?’, she asked.
‘Asking her a few questions,’ Presario nodded towards the picture of Ripley. Ryder raised an eyebrow. ‘Is she answering?’ Presario turned to look at Ryder, a look of sadness crossing his face. ‘I don’t know. But I have an idea.’

The General came into the room quietly. Almost whispering he said, ‘I think you two better take a look at this.

***

They were all in a conference room viewing a tape. What they were seeing was the aftermath of a massive explosion. The General was talking as they watched.

‘We’ve come across these other xeno’s before. The last known contact we had was back in the 21st century. There were two major incidents that we know of but most likely there were more. One was with a United States guerilla outfit and the other was with a special unit within the FBI. In each incident, there were only one of these creatures.’

‘What you’re seeing is the aftermath of the first incident. A major by the name of Dutch Schaffer actually fought one of these things in hand to hand combat.’

Just then a picture of a man came onto the screen with the caption ‘Major Dutch Schaffer.’ Presario and Ryder took in his details. He was by no means a small man. He obviously spent much of his time in the gym.

‘We have very detailed accounts from the major, and from the special FBI unit. These incidents happened ten years apart. Now what makes it interesting is that on both accounts, the reports strongly suggests that the sole xeno was more like a hunter, or predator. It went to great lengths not to be seen, including semi invisibility. ‘

Presario looked at the General. ‘There you go,’ he said before turning back to the video screen. The General kept talking as a picture of another man came up with the caption ‘Lieutenant Michael Harrigan.’

‘This man here found the xeno’s ship and entered it. What he saw was what he liked to call a trophy case.’ It was Ryder’s turn to look over at the General. Fearing the answer she would get she asked, ‘What was in the trophy case?’

The General looked at them both, pausing before he answered her question. ‘Skulls. I think it’s safe to assume we’re now dealing with the same creature.’

‘One thing I don’t get,’ Presario began, ‘why now do we seem to have armies of these things?’
The General shook his head. ‘I don’t know. All we’ve got to go on are these files that are hundreds of years old. Nothing seems to make sense anymore.’

Presario saw his chance. ‘I think there might be a way to find out,’ he said. The General looked back to him from the video screen. ‘How?’ Presario looked between Ryder and the General. ‘Genetic memory.’

Ryder looked a little confused. ‘What.’ Presario didn’t like the idea but it was the only real chance they had of finding out what they desperately needed to know. ‘Genetic memory,’ he said talking more to the General. ‘The scientists on the Auriga, they cloned Ripley to get the bug. They found out that the cloned Ripley could remember everything.’
The General grasped what Presario was saying. ‘Yes, yes you’re right. With the genetic memory not only could Ripley remember her past, but she may have been able to remember the bugs past as well.’

Presario nodded. ‘That’s right.’
The General kept talking. ‘If so, maybe we can find out where these things originally came from.’
‘We might be able to find out more than that General. We could find a way to kill them.’

The General nodded, warming to the idea. ‘Ok I’ll get Franks and his team to start the cloning process using the techniques they used on the Auriga,’ he paused. Turning back to Presario he asked, ‘Who do we clone. It’ll have to be someone that has been impregnated.’

‘How ‘bout Perry. We should still have his blood samples lying around the place.’
‘Right. I’ll tell Franks to get on it right away.’

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Seven Continued...

***

The alien was dead. It was in a specimen jar after just being surgically removed from Perry’s chest. Presario and Ryder and the General were all there watching Perry as he sat on the table looking at everyone.

‘Now he probably can remember,’ Franks began, ‘but it maybe difficult to get it out of him.’
‘What do you mean?’, the General asked.
‘To be honest, I don’t really know what I’m dealing with here. He may not remember anything or he may only remember certain things.’
‘Can you give me a straight answer?’
‘Look,’ Franks said trying to be patient, ‘my guess is that it may resemble what we call repressed memories. If that’s the case I could try hypnosis.’

‘You do whatever you can Franks.’ The General stepped closer to Perry who just stared back. ‘Perry, do you remember me?’
‘Yes. I remember you. You sent me to my death.’
The General looked a little sad. ‘You’re right I did. I’m sorry but we’re beyond that now. Right now we’re trying to save mankind. We’re trying to save Earth.’

Perry looked away from the General to Presario. ‘What do you want me to do?’ The General started to speak but was cut off by Perry. ‘I wasn’t talking to you. Persario?’

Presario stepped forward. ‘We need to know everything you know. You know the bugs have genetic memory, we believe that you may be able to remember something of their past. Maybe it will help us in our fight.’

Perry looked from face to face. ‘I’ll do my best.’ The General sighed in relief. ‘Thank you Perry.’

The look Perry gave the General would have melted ice.

***

The General, Presario and Ryder walked into the command centre to the tune of war. Radio messages going back and forth, people running around with important messages and officers screaming orders across the room.

The three of them stopped. ‘General,’ Presario said, ‘I think it’s time we started to rethink the evacuation idea.’

The General turned to Presario. ‘Presario I know it’s looking bad.’ He was cut off in mid sentence by Ryder. ‘With all due respect General it’s gone to #$@*%. If it looks bad that’s because it is.’

Presario jumped in. ‘She’s right General. We have two different alien species out there that are fighting each other on our soil. We couldn’t even contain the bugs and now we’ve got a sophisticated intelligent life form out there that to me looks like they were born to fight.’

The General was looking between the two of them. He knew it was over. He just didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t want to admit that he had lost Earth to an alien invasion.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘If only we could mass eliminate the bugs, then maybe the humanoids would leave. They only came here after the bugs had overrun the planet.’

‘I know General,’ Presario sympathised, ‘but we’ve got to worry about us now.’

The General turned away from them both. Shaking his head, he looked out over the chaos that was taking place in the room. He turned back to Presario and Ryder. Looking at them he just nodded.

‘Thank you General,’ Presario said as he put an arm on the Generals shoulder. The General reached into his pocket and pulled out his asthma spray. He put it to his mouth, pumped the spray and breathed in. He coughed twice.

When he looked up he saw Ryder staring at him in a strange way. ‘What?’
She looked at Presario who had a curious look on his face. ‘I know how we can kill them.’

Presario and the General looked at each other. ‘You do, do you?’ Ryder looked at them with excitement. ‘Gas.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Gas. The gas that Ripley used on the Narcissus.’ Looking at bewildered faces she explained further. ‘Ripley said in her statement that she used a gas to get the alien out from the pipes so she could zap it into space.’

Presario understood. ‘That’s right,’ he said turning towards the General. ‘Sir, that gas that Ripley mentioned wasn’t gas exactly, it was a combination of disinfectants. The disinfectant was manufactured to kill specific bacteria. It’s not harmful to much else. We could rig some ships with this stuff and spray the surface without doing anymore damage to peoples homes or to the environment.’

The General was shaking his head, not believing it. ‘But do we know that this stuff will kill the bugs. Every chemical attack we’ve made against them has had utterly no effect. Ripley said that the bug screamed in anger when she hit it with the gas.’

Ryder nodded. ‘Yes, but couldn’t it have been screaming in pain.’ Presario and Ryder looked at the General in hope. The General looked between them.

‘Alright. Presario, I’ll leave you to sort out the details. I want you to co-ordinate with anyone that’s still alive. We’ll need more then one ship to do this. Get as many ships as you can rigged and ready to go. We will use this as a last resort only. I still want to explore other options because I’m not entirely convinced that your idea will work.’

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN.

[alvspr]

CHAPTER EIGHT

Presario and Ryder got to work immediately on the ship. They had marines mass producing the disinfectant spray, getting it ready to be placed on the ship. This was their last hope. If this didn’t work, they would lose Earth to an alien invader.

They were on radios to military fortifications all over the world, organising and coordinating their efforts. Presario hoped that Ryder was right, that this disinfectant would indeed actually kill the aliens.

Ryder finished making a radio call and turned to Presario who walked into the room behind her. ‘Well that’s it,’ she said, ‘we’re all set.’

Presario nodded. ‘Great. Let’s go tell the General.’ Just then the General walked into the room. ‘Tell me what?’

Presario turned around. ‘That we’re set to go General. We have coordinated with the military fortifications that are left and we are ready to start spraying the surface.’

For the first time in a long time, the General smiled. ‘Good Presario. First though, Franks has finished with Perry. We’ll go there first.’
‘Certainly General.’

‘I want to remind you Presario,’ the General began, ‘and you too Ryder that this may not work.’

Presario nodded. ‘We understand that General, but it’s worth a try.’
‘Yes but these things aren’t even affected by radiation. Hell the only thing that we know of to kill these things is to blow them apart.’

Ryder spoke up. ‘It’s going to work.’ The General looked at Ryder seeing not anger, fear or sadness. What he saw was assuredness. ‘I hope so Ryder.’ Ryder just kept staring at him with that same confidence.

***

The three of them were seated at a table. Franks was standing in front of them, a whiteboard behind him. Perry was also there but was sitting away from everyone. Ryder had her daughter’s necklace in her hand and she was rubbing the dove with her thumb.

‘Hello everyone. What I’ve been able to get out of Perry here,’ Franks said acknowledging Perry with a wave of his hand, ‘was rather interesting.’ The General looked annoyed. ‘Cut to the chase Franks, we don’t have time for this.’

Franks looked a little hurt by the statement but continued speaking as if he was an expert on the subject matter.

‘Well, Perry was able to remember quite a bit. He could recall what I believe was the birth of the species.’ The three of them looked at each other in surprise. They then turned and looked at Perry. ‘I believe these creatures did not evolve naturally.’

‘Excuse me?’, the General said.
‘It is my belief that these creatures have been genetically engineered by an alien species far more intelligent then us.’

‘The space jockey,’ Presario said.
‘What?’, the General asked.
Franks answered for him. ‘The space jockey that was in the derelict spacecraft on LV426.’

The General just nodded his head in recognition. ‘What makes you so sure that they were genetically engineered?’
‘Well, under hypnosis, I was able to get Perry to remember quite a lot. The first thing Perry remembers from the bugs is waking up in a lab. I think that was a pretty good indication that they were genetically engineered.’

‘Ok. Do we know why they were engineered? I mean who engineers a creature like that?’
‘Why do you think we’ve been trying to capture one for over two hundred years. It’s the perfect bio-weapon.’

Look of realisation swept across all three faces. ‘Of course,’ Ryder said, ‘you guys went after this thing because you wanted it for a weapon. What you didn’t realise was that they already were a weapon. Engineered that way.’

‘That’s right,’ Franks agreed. ‘Look at their characteristics. Acid for blood, their ability to affect DNA and everything else we know about them. These creatures have been designed specifically for one purpose, to kill. I mean when you think about it, there’s no way these things could have evolved naturally, they’re just too perfect for their purpose.’

Presario spoke up, traces of fear in his voice. ‘Do you know if these things were engineered to kill something specific?’

Franks said, ‘I think they were designed to kill the humanoid predators we now have roaming around out there.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because most of Perry’s memories have to do with those creatures. It kinda makes sense if you think about it.’
‘Perhaps you could enlighten us,’ Ryder said sarcastically.

‘Well look at their individual characteristics. The bugs can not be seen in infrared, these predators see in infrared. The bugs have acid for blood, the predators have a weapon that fuses and quarterises the wound minimising the spray of blood. The predators have a camouflage defence mechanism that somehow bends light making them virtually invisible, the bugs don’ t have eyes that we know of so they don’t rely on eyesight to locate their prey. The bugs have…’ he was cut off by the General.

‘Yeah ok we get it Franks. Ok now that we’ve established this, can someone tell me why they’ve decided to fight it out on our planet?’

‘These space jockeys,’ Presario said, ‘were they at war with these predators? Is that why they created the bugs? To kill them?’
Franks answered. ‘I don’t know. Perrys memories couldn’t tell me that. I think it’s safe to assume that they were at war with each other.’

‘Ok, so these predators have come here to kill the bugs.’
‘But why?’, the General insisted.
‘They can’t let the weapon that was designed to kill them survive. Whether it’s here on Earth or on a derelict spacecraft they can’t afford to let them live. These things are probably all over the universe. We’ve already found two sites for them, goodness knows how many more are out there.’

‘The space jockeys couldn’t control them,’ Franks said. ‘They made them too perfect. They fled their world as the bugs took over their planet, unfortunately taking a few with them.’
‘That would explain how we came across them,’ the General surmised.

The three of them sat there thinking. They were having a little trouble taking it all in.

The General leaned forward. ‘Right, now can you tell me anything else, like how the #$@*% do we get them off our planet?’

Franks sadly shook his head. ‘Unfortunately no. Perrys memories couldn’t tell me anything like that.’ The General swore. He had been hoping for a little miracle.

‘What I can tell you is that there is another link in their breeding cycle.’ The three of them looked surprised. ‘What do you mean, another link?’

Franks looked a little scared. ‘Another link. I call it the Queen Mother.’ The General, his eyes closed, waved his finger no. ‘Wait a minute. We already know about the Queen. She lays the eggs.’

‘I didn’t say Queen, I said Queen Mother.’ Franks got up and went to the whiteboard behind him. ‘Perhaps it’s better if I illustrate,’ he said picking up a whiteboard marker.

‘According to Perrys memories, and from my own theories, I believe that the Queen Mother stage of the alien life cycle very rarely occurs.’ He wrote on the top of the whiteboard in the centre two letters. QM.

‘Now we know that the individual Queens control their drones. How, we don’t know.’ He wrote several Q’s in a straight line, horizontally across the board. There was a space of about ten centimetres between them. He drew connecting lines from the letters QM, to the individual Q’s.

‘Let me ask you a question. How come we have never seen alien drones fighting amongst themselves.’ Presario started to say something but was cut off by Franks. ‘I’ll tell you why. It’s because they are all ultimately controlled by the one Queen. That being the Queen Mother.’

He wrote on the board D’s all along the bottom. He did not space them out but rather had them scrunched up together. He then drew lines from the D’s back to individual Q’s.

QM


Q Q Q Q


D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D

‘The Queen Mother controls the Queens while the Queens control the drones. We would really only see a Queen Mother when there are multiple nests with multiple Queens in close vicinity to each other.’

Presario was trying to get as much information as he could. ‘So this Queen Mother, does she lay eggs?’
‘Ah, no I don’t think so. She would probably share a nest with another Queen,’ Franks answered. ‘Would that mean then that she’s mobile? The other Queens just sit in a nest all day and lay eggs.’

Franks shrugged. ‘I guess that would be a fair assumption to make.’ Ryder spoke up next. ‘That would mean that we have another bug out there that is quite ferocious. The Queens themselves are far stronger then the drones. This Queen Mother would have to be at least as strong as a normal Queen.’ The four of them sat silently, contemplating what they had just heard.

Perry who had been quiet throughout the entire proceedings spoke up for the first time. ‘She’s coming.’ They all turned to look at him. He sat there with no emotion on his face.

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Eight Continued...

‘Who’s coming?’, Franks asked.
‘Why don’t you ask Golding?’, Perry replied. Just then, Golding came bursting into the room. ‘Sirs, I think you better come take a look at this,’ she said before rushing out of the room again. They all jumped up and ran out after Golding, Ryder leaving her daughter’s necklace on the table.

They raced into the command centre and what they saw scared Franks out of his mind. The bugs were attacking the base. Not just in ones or twos but in thousands. The marines were losing the battle even though they had the sophisticated technology that ‘theoretically’ should be able to deal with the threat.

‘I want those dropships in the air,’ the General commanded. One of the radio operators yelled across the room. ‘We’re trying sir but they’ve breached the outer defence. We throwing everything we’ve got at them and we’re losing ground.’

Presario watched the chaos. It was now or never. He turned towards the General. ‘Sir, we’ve got to go. It’s all going to #$@*% here. We need to leave.’ The General ignored him but kept yelling orders.

Presario stepped towards the General and grabbed his arm and spun him around. ‘General!’ Presario stood back. Fear. Fear was written in the eyes of the General. ‘General!’ Presario screamed again. He got a scared look from the General for a reply.

‘God damn it. All right everyone,’ Presario commanded attention by holding up his hands. Most people looked over at him to hear what he had to say. The ones that didn’t were on radios. ‘We’re leaving. Do what you have to do and get to your evacuation points.’

The room started to clear out as the marines all understood the command. Leave or die. Presario turned towards Ryder. ‘It’s now or never.’ They turned picked up rifles and helmets with radio mikes and took off through the hallways, the battle that was looming outside was getting closer and closer. Perry loped alongside them.

They were on their way to the ship they had rigged up. All of a sudden Ryder stopped running. ‘Wait.’ Presario and Perry turned back to face her, waiting to hear what she had to say. ‘Rebecca’s necklace. I can’t leave without it,’ Ryder said. Presario looked shocked. ‘What! We don’t have time for this.’

Ryder looked up at Presario. ‘I will not leave without that necklace. It’s the only thing I have left of her.’ Presario stepped forward and grabbed Ryder’s arm. He was scared she was going to go back for something as little as a necklace. ‘Ryder god damn it, we’ve got to go now! That necklace is not Rebecca!’

Ryder stepped back away from him. ‘David, I will not allow myself to leave without her necklace. Go on to the ship and get her ready. I’ll catch you up.’ And with that Ryder turned and ran back down the hallway.

Perry leaned forward and spoke to Presario. ‘Let’s go. She’ll be alright, she can handle herself.’
‘Yeah I noticed,’ Presario whispered, watching Ryder’s retreating back.

END OF CHAPTER EIGHT.

[alvspr]

CHAPTER NINE

Presario and Perry found the hanger with the ship. It was strangely quite in the big room. The only occupant was the ship that had been rigged up with the gas that they were going to spray the planet with.

The hanger doors were still closed. Presario’s eyes searched every shadow, every corner but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. In the distance he could hear the battle raging outside. Presario eyed Perry. He still didn’t know if he could trust him yet and he was acting strange. Like he wasn’t scared of anything.

‘Alright,’ Presario began, ‘I’m going to go to the control room to open the hanger doors. I want you to go to the ship and get her ready.’ Perry looked at him sceptically. ‘Come on Presario, you don’t want to go anywhere else but on that ship. I’ll go get the hanger doors and you can get the ship ready.’

‘What?’
‘Come on, you and I both know that I have a distinct advantage now being part alien. The ship is probably safer then the control room so I’ll get the doors. You know Presario, you’re only human. Humans have emotions like fear that can get in their way.’ Presario looked him up and down, wondering if he could trust him. ‘Are you sure?’

By way of answer, Perry turned around and started jogging away towards the control room, his rifle lazily resting in his arms. Presario watched his back for a while before heading off towards the ship.

Perry raced through the hallways and rooms towards the control centre. His senses were overworked. He wouldn’t have been able to describe what he was feeling but he was so much more aware of his surroundings. It was a whole new world to him.

He came to the door of the control room and was about to enter the keycode when he sensed it. He didn’t know how but he knew where it was and what it was doing.

He slowly turned around, searching the room. There! Right where he knew it would be. The shimmering of light at the far end of the room. He tilted his head in curiosity. Not at what he was looking at for he knew exactly what it was, but in how he knew.

He ducked a millisecond before the Predator fired its plasma weapon, the strange blue fire shooting over his head and blowing out the door to the control centre. Instantly, Perry let off a grenade in the direction of the predator. He got up and kept moving.

He knew the predator wasn’t anywhere near the explosion from the grenade. There was no fear which Perry also found curious. He knew that in his old life he would have been scared shitless at the situation he was now in.
He relocated the predator faster than he would have thought possible. The predator was running through the room between the windows and furniture. Perry brought his rifle up and fired.

He tracked with the predator as it ran through the room, Perry never letting up on the fire rate. Glass shattered, furniture was destroyed, the noise was deafening but Perry hardly seemed to notice.

He jumped out of the way of a blast from the predator, rolling across the floor and to his feet. He didn’t stop moving. He ran on through the room, away from the predator. He wasn’t retreating as such, just relocating to a more advantageous position. For some reason, the idea of retreat never crossed his mind.

He fired in the general direction of the predator knowing that not one bullet would come close to hitting his mark but hoping that it would keep the predator at bay for a few seconds.

And then it happened. The worst sound that anyone could ever hear in this situation. Click. The sound of an empty rifle magazine. No more bullets. A human would have heard that sound as the sound of their death. Perry heard it as an empty rifle magazine.

It didn’t worry him any more then when he heard the rifle fire. In one swift move he dropped the rifle, picked up the nicely crafted wooden chair next to him and snapped the half a meter chair leg off, creating a spear for himself.

He didn’t waste anytime. He charged. The predator decloaked, its arms up in front of it. It thrust its arms to the side, its wrist blade flicking out. The roar the predator made would have been enough to send a man to insanity but Perry didn’t slow his assault.

The predator charged. Perry feinted a thrust with his ‘spear.’ The predator blocked the feint and punched Perry on the face. Perry swung a full three hundred and sixty degrees and thrust his ‘spear’ into the predators shoulder.

The predator screamed before striking Perry across the stomach with its wrist blades. Perry fell back and away from the predator, leaving the spear in the predators shoulder.

The predator reached up and ripped the spear from its shoulder, seemingly doing it no harm. It looked at its wrist blades that were now melting due to Perrys acidic blood. The predator stepped forward, watching Perry.

Perry was dimly aware of another Predator entering the room. He glanced over and saw it decloaking. It was older. Wiser. He didn’t know how he knew this, he just did. That still didn’t save him though.

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Nine Continued...

***

Ryder ran along the hallway watching every corner, every shadow. Her heart was pumping so hard that she thought it was going to burst right out of her chest. She wanted that necklace.
She didn’t know if the aliens had breached the inner defence or not but she wasn’t going to be taking any chances.

She found the room where she had last had the necklace. It should be right there on the table. The tabletop was bare! What was she going to do now? She didn’t want to leave without that necklace.

She didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing but she started running down the hallway. She wasn’t watching the corners and shadows anymore. She was running to find the necklace as if it were her daughter.

She found the control room where everyone had deserted their posts under Presario’s orders. She peeked in. It looked like a bomb had gone off in there. The aliens had obviously breached the inner defences.

That did it. Necklace or no necklace, she was leaving. She turned and started running back towards the ship. She ran past an open door and stopped. There sitting in the middle of the room was the General.

‘General! What are you doing? We have to get out of here,’ Ryder said. The General looked up at her blankly. ‘What have I done? Susan, I’m so sorry that I was a part of all this.’ Ryder looked at the General. That was the first time he had called her by her first name.

‘General,’ Ryder said speaking softer this time, ‘you fought to save peoples lives. Whatever part you had in this, you have fought to redeem yourself.’ The General shook his head.

‘Here,’ he said taking her hand and placing something in it, ‘You must go.’ Ryder looked down at her hand and what the General had placed in it. It was her daughter’s necklace.

She could have died happy right then. It was almost as if she had just gotten her daughter back. The General stood. Ryder looked back up at him. ‘For whatever good I have done in this world, it has been completely erased for the bad. I deserve to die.’

Ryder didn’t see what he had in his hand. It happened all too quickly. He raised the pistol to his head and fired. ‘NO!’ Ryder closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

She knelt down next to the Generals body, his lifeless eyes staring up at her. She pursed her lips as she closed his dead eyes, nodded once and turned and left with her beloved necklace.

Ryder was running. This time she was running to live. What she had just seen was something that was going to haunt her for the rest of her life. That’s if she ever got out of there.

She realised then what Presario had meant about the necklace not being Rebecca. What was she thinking. Rebecca would always be gone but she would always be remembered. With or without the necklace, it didn’t change her feelings for her lost daughter. Ryder vowed then and there to survive. To go on and to live. For Rebecca.

As she ran on down the hall she had to tread carefully for the aliens had to have been swarming throughout the building by now. A few times aliens attacked her but she was ready for them. She conserved her ammunition and only used what was necessary.

Up ahead she saw movement. She slowed down but didn’t stop. She saw someone crouching against the wall, peering around the corner. It was Franks! She thought he would have been killed by now.

‘Franks,’ she said. Franks was startled and spun around throwing his arms up in front of his face in a defensive gesture. When he realised who it was, he flung himself at her. ‘Protect me. You’ve got to save me!’ Ryder calmly grabbed his arms and pushed him away.

‘Calm down, calm down!,’ Ryder said. Franks kept babbling, saying the same thing over and over. ‘Ya gotta’ help me.’ Ryder couldn’t feel sorry for the man. Unlike the General, he had never tried to redeem himself for the wrong he had done. He kept believing that they had all done the right thing. He made her sick.

And now to see him like this was almost all she could bear. She wanted to rip this guys throat out. But she would save him. Let him live in misery for the rest of his life, knowing what he had done.

‘I’ll get ya outta’ here,’ she said. Franks almost knocked her over when he grabbed her. ‘Ya gotta help me’
Ryder pushed him away, hard. ‘Relax Franks, I’ll help you.’

None of them saw it. It was big. As big as a queen. Bigger. Yet it looked much like a queen. It grabbed Franks and hoisted him up slowly. Ryder backed away, not fast enough.

While in one hand it held Franks, who was screaming, another hand whipped out to grab Ryder. Ryder saw it and raised her rifle to fire. The hand wrapped around the rifle and snatched it out of her hands.

It dropped it almost immediately as it had missed its target and reached for Ryder again. This time Ryder was faster. She backpeddled down the hallway. Franks was still screaming. Another hand reached up and gripped the top half of Franks’ body.

The two arms pulled in opposite directions. Franks’ screaming stopped abruptly in a wet gurgling sound. The Queen Mother watched Ryder race off down the hallway. It slowly started its pursuit.
Ryder saw the Queen Mother begin her advance. She had to find another way to the hanger. This time though, she didn’t have any weapons.

To be continued.

[alvspr]

Chapter Nine Continued...

***

Presario was beginning to worry. Perry had been gone a long time. He decided that he would have to go out and check. It wasn’t something that he was looking forward to. Perry was right. He was only human and he was scared.

He picked up his rifle and exited the ship, making sure to close the door. He cautiously made his way to the control centre.

He entered a room that looked like it had been chewed up and spat out by a giant. There was obvious damage from weapons fire. He could see the door to the control centre had been blown apart. So much for the keycode. He hoped the controls within were still intact.

He slowly made his way towards the entrance. Legs. On the ground. As he moved forward he saw who they belonged to. Perry. He lay face down. The first thing that Presario noticed was that his spine and skull were missing. They were now a trophy for one lucky Predator.

He stepped over the body and moved forward into the control centre. Everything seemed to be intact. He moved to the consol, his movements much quicker now. He worked fast, his fingers flying over the controls.

Presario almost jumped for joy when he saw the confirmation that the hanger doors were opening. He turned around and picked his rifle up off the desk and left the control centre.

Something caught his eye. He didn’t see it on his way in because it was on the other side of the desk. It was glowing green. It looked like blood. Could it be the Predators blood? So Perry didn’t go down fighting.

Presario’s eyes searched the room. Was it still here? He took one step forward and found himself flying through the air, his rifle getting flung out of his grasp. He got up quickly and grabbed for his rifle.

He hit the wall hard. This was no good. How was he supposed to fight something when he couldn’t even see it? He got up and ran for the door. He had to make it back to the ship. He flew down the hall at record speed. He knew it wasn’t enough though.

***

Ryder burst into the hanger at full pace. She didn’t know if she had lost the Queen Mother or not but she didn’t care. She had made back. She saw the stars in the night sky above the ship. The hanger doors were open.

She raced for the ship. She didn’t waste anytime getting on board, entering through the open door. Once inside, she headed for the cockpit. ‘Presario,’ she called, ‘Perry, where are you?’

She found the cockpit but no one else. Where were they? She found that the flight controls had been set and the ship was ready for take off but where was Presario?

She sat down in the pilot’s chair and pulled on the headphones and radio mike. She flicked a few switches and said into the mike, ‘Presario are you there?’

Presario was sprinting down the hall knowing that he probably wouldn’t make it when he heard Ryders’ panicky voice. ‘I read you Ryder. Where are you?’, he asked. ‘I’m in the #$@*% ship, where are you and Perry?’
‘Perry’s dead. Can’t talk now, I’m trying to ditch a friend. Just stay there and I’ll be there shortly.’

The explosion knocked him off his feet. The predator had shot the ground out from under him. He lay there dazed. Physically he seemed to be ok but it was taking a while for him to come around from the shock. Ryder kept talking. ‘Presario are you ok? Presario?’

Presario could barely hear her because he was so dazed. He was slowly starting to get his bearings back when he saw it. The Predator was walking slowly toward him. It was decloaked, its dreadlocks swinging as it walked. Presario didn’t dare move as it walked right up to him.

Everything seemed to slow down. He knew he was going to die. He didn’t hear Ryder’s voice in his ear as his entire attention was focused on the predator. It was all strangely surreal.

Suddenly an explosion rocked the very foundations of the building, blowing the wall out and caving in some of the roof. Presario protected himself with his arms as best he could but was fortunate that he was lying on the ground.

The predator wasn’t so lucky. It had been standing and took the full force of the wall and roof exploding into it. Presario finally heard Ryder’s voice. ‘Presario god damn it answer me!’ He stood up brushing himself off futilely. He looked down at the predator covered in rubble. ‘I’m ok, it’s just a scratch.’ Ryder sighed in relief.

He turned to leave when he noticed the rubble starting to move. He couldn’t believe it. Surely the predator was dead. He stared dumbfounded as the rubble fell off the predator as it pushed it away.

He saw then that the predator was very close to death. It was covered in what Presario guessed was its own blood. It was glowing green. The predator looked up at him. In Presario’s voice it said, ‘I’m ok, it’s just a scratch.’ Presario just stared.

Slowly and methodically, it reached over to something attached to its arm. It looked like a keypad of some sort. It started tapping the keypad. Presario realised in an instant what it was doing.

‘Shit. Ah Ryder I think you better take off and get out of here,’ he said into his mike. ‘Say again. I’m not going to leave without you.’ The predator finished tapping the keypad and a strange noise began emanating from the device. Strange symbols appeared in what Presario thought looked too much like a countdown. He turned and ran down the hall.

‘Get out of here Ryder,’ he screamed into his mike, ‘its set a bomb. I say you’ve got about thirty seconds. I’ll never get to you in time. Just go. I’m going out the east lock. Maybe I can make it.’ With that Presario ripped his helmet off and ran for all he was worth.

Ryder looked scared. She couldn’t leave Presario. The Queen Mother bursting into the hanger made her mind up for her. She jumped into action when she saw the Queen Mother through the window. She didn’t know how but she was sure that the Queen Mother knew exactly where she was.

She strapped herself into the chair and started the lift off procedure. The Queen Mother screamed and charged the ship. Slowly at first and then faster the ship began to rise up out of the hanger.

Presario sprinted. He knew there was no way he was going to make the hanger so he headed for the closest exit. If he could get outside of the building, he may just have a chance. That’s if the bugs didn’t pick him up.

He found the exit and burst through it. He was surprised he didn’t see any signs of battle on this side of the fortification. He made a beeline for the forest. He had to put as much distance between him and the building as he could.

Ryder pushed down harder on the accelerator. The ship rose higher and higher into the night sky. She had a determined look on her face. She was going to make it.

Presario was running flat out. He heard sizzling behind him which he thought was weird but he didn’t dare look back. He dived into a ditch just as the bomb exploded.

Ryder saw the light from the explosion below her and closed her eyes. A full two seconds lapsed before the shockwave hit the ship, bucking it around in the air. Ryder was glad she used a couple of seconds to strap herself in otherwise she would have smashed her head against the console.

She slowly got her wits about and then spoke into the mike. ‘Presario? Presario do you read me? Presario?’ She closed her eyes in mourning. Was she the only one left? If that was the case, she had a job to do.

END OF CHAPTER NINE

[alvspr]

CHAPTER TEN

Ryder made her way down towards the cargo bay. She had set the gas cylinders for her run. She was going to start spraying the surface of the planet with the gas. She didn’t know how but she knew that this was going to work. She had so much confidence in her plan.

She reached the cargo bay and made her way to first of the oversized cylinders. She started attaching a line to it and was reading the readout the cylinder had on the side.

She was so focused on her job that anything could have come right up to her and she wouldn’t have noticed. She turned around and dropped the hose she had in her hand.

There, standing not ten feet away, was a predator. Just standing there. It’s arms were by it side and it didn’t look threatening. That didn’t do anything to quell Ryder’s fear though. How the hell did it get on board? Ryder was fed up trying to understand these things so she forgot it.

The predator looked different somehow. It looked old. She didn’t know what made her think that as she hadn’t seen one before. She didn’t move, not wanting to provoke it.

The predator turned and slowly took a few steps away from her. Ryder watched in fascinated horror, wondering what the predator was going to do. It slowly reached up to its shoulder cannon and unhooked it, dropping it on the ground almost casually.

Ryder got the sense that it didn’t want anything to do with her. Then what did it want? There was nothing else around. Did it expect a response from Ryder? If it did, Ryder didn’t give it. Its shoulders looked slumped Ryder thought. It was as if it was resigning itself to something.

The predator turned its head slowly to glance over at Ryder. Ryder stared back. The predator barely took any notice of her but looked over towards an air vent in the roof.

Ryder followed its gaze and saw the air vent wondering what the predator was doing. And then she heard it. A hiss. Oh no! It couldn’t be. The air vent crashed to the floor as a long black leg smashed it’s way down.

Slowly and gracefully the Queen Mother lowered her enormous frame from the ducting above.

The predator didn’t move but Ryder took an involuntary step back. The Queen Mother, now completely in the cargo bay with Ryder and the predator, hissed at them. The Queen Mother towered over both of them and the predator was at least eight feet tall.

Ryder slowly backed up looking between the two alien species. The cargo bay suddenly seemed so huge, like there was nowhere to hide. This was what the predator had been preparing for. It knew it was here and it had resigned itself to a hand to talon battle. Ryder didn’t know which one would win.

The predator charged, letting out an almighty roar. The Queen Mother charged and Ryder tried to back into a corner. She couldn’t do anything but watch. The two hit. The predator was sent flying across the cargo bay, it’s small size compared to that of the Queen Mother was no match.

It got up just in time to grab the Queen Mothers arms as it tried to crush the predator. The predator may have been a lot smaller then the Queen Mother but it was by no means weaker. The predator had enormous strength and wrestled the Queen Mother across the cargo bay.

The predator threw the Queen Mother against a wall with such force that Ryder thought for sure that they should have gone through it. The Queen Mother was hissing and roaring at the predator the entire time, its frustration apparent.

The Queen Mother raised its tail up and lashed out at the predator knocking it away. The blow obviously hurt the predator as it struggled to get to its feet. The Queen Mother pounced, flinging the flimsy predator through the air.

The predator landed hard and Ryder knew who was going to win this intergalactic battle. The Queen Mother was just too big. Too quick. Too strong. She had to do something. She was sure that if the Queen Mother killed the predator, she would be next but what could she do.

The predator was moving very slowly now, dragging itself along the ground. The Queen Mother moved up beside it. It opened its mouth and its inner teeth protruded out. The predator rolled over onto its back to face the Queen Mother. They looked at each other. The predator with its big round eyes and the Queen Mother with god knew what.

The Queen Mother lowered her head for the kill when a fire hose was shoved in its face. Ryder was there with the hose attached to one of the cylinders. “Now you’re one ugly mother fucker,” Ryder said before unleashing the high pressure gas onto the alien.

The Queen Mother screamed in pain as it tried to back away from the gas. Ryder knew that she was hurting it, knew that her plan to rid the planet of the bugs was going to work.

She drove the Queen Mother back and back until she trapped it in an open air lock. She killed the gas just as she shut the door to the air lock. The Queen Mother was now trapped.

For a few seconds, Ryder watched the Queen Mother through the portal. When the Queen Mother made a move towards the door, Ryder it the button next to it. This button opened the outer door.

All the air and one trapped Queen Mother were sucked out into the hard vacuum of space. Ryder watched the Queen Mother flying off. Ryder smiled for the first time in a long time.

She turned her attention back towards the predator who was slowly, very slowly, getting to its feet. It made its way to within a few feet of Ryder. It looked Ryder up.

The predator reached up to the side of its head and unhooked a line that was going into what looked like a mask. It then unhooked the line on the other side. Slowly it took its mask off. It looked at her, before slowly turning away.

“Wait,” Ryder couldn’t believe what she was doing. The predator half turned back towards her. Ryder stepped up to it, taking her daughters necklace from around her neck as she did so.

Slowly, she reached down to take the predators hand in hers. Turning its hand palm up, she lowered the necklace with the white dove into it. Looking back up at the predator she said, “Take it.”

The predator looked down at its hand and the necklace Ryder had just given it. It looked back up at Ryder before turning around and walking away. Ryder didn’t know how it was going to leave the ship but she didn’t care. She forgot about and went about her original job of setting the cylinders.

***

Ryder re-entered the Earths atmosphere. She had hooked up the cylinders and was about to make her first run over the surface when she decided to fly over the military fortification they had all been in.

She was hoping to see Presario there but didn’t like her chances. She could see the devastation from quite a long way away. The huge crater was hard to miss. She flew in low watching the ground, hoping for a glimpse of life.

“My God.” There standing in the middle of it all was Presario. He was just standing there as if he was invulnerable. She was overjoyed that he was alive.

***
Presario was glad to see Ryder. They didn’t say too much to each other, the events of the past few days had taken it all out of them. They now had the best job in the world to attend to. To rid planet Earth of the alien bugs.

They flew along into the sunset, a stream of gas releasing from the bottom of the ship to soak the surface with its cleansing smell.

END OF CHAPTER TEN

[alvspr]

EPILOGUE

Two Months Later

The final mop up of the aliens was taking place. Most places were now devoid of the monstrous bugs. Now they knew how to kill them, the ones that didn’t die in the original surface spray were quickly taken care of.

The real job was only just beginning. The rebuilding of planet Earth. It would take years for it to be restored but at least the nightmare was over. Those people that were able to flee the planet were beginning to return home to help rebuild it.

Presario and Ryder had decided to go and pay their respects at the cemetery. They were walking amongst the tombstones reading the names that were on them. ‘Some of these are before the war,’ Ryder said. Presario just nodded.

Ryder stopped at one and read it. Presario moved on. He read a name on one a little further on and stopped to read it. An old lady stepped up beside him to read the tombstone. Presario glanced over at her. She must have been a hundred if she was a day he thought.

She looked at him. ‘Come to pay your respects?’, she asked. Presario turned back to the tombstone. ‘Yeah. It was terrible wasn’t it?’ The old lady nodded her head. She seemed very mournful. She was in the right place for it.

‘Did you know this one?’, she asked indicating the tombstone they were in front of. Presario shook his head no. ‘No,’ Presario said as if it was obvious. The old lady understood.

She spoke as if he wasn’t there, more to the tombstone. ‘I’ve lived a long time. I’ve survived this damn war. I’ve survived many things. I’ve lived my life.’ She turned to Presario. ‘You go on remembering, but don’t forget to live.’

Presario was taken aback by the profound statement and watched her waddle off. He had curious look on his face. He looked from her back to the tombstone and back to her. Ryder came up behind him. ‘Who was that?’

Presario took one last look at her before turning back to the tombstone. ‘Nah, couldn’t be.’ Ryder and Presario read the tombstone together before moving on.

It read: Ellen Ripley – A daughter, a mother a survivor. RIP.

THE END