Steve Perry - Aliens 03 - The Female War

401 Pages·2016·0.7 MB·English

by  Perry Steven

The Female War
Aliens - Book 03
Steve Perry

1

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

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

“Come on, goddammit!”

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

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

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

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

The queen had a huge crown, a comb of glossy black that swept up and back
from her misshapen
head. A second set of arms, smaller, jutted from her chest. It—she—moved
slowly toward them from
around the corner a few meters away, hissing and drooling.
Ripley backed away; the girl tightened her small, sweaty hands in a finger
lock to keep from falling.

The lift, it was here!

Ripley spun.

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

The queen ran toward them—

The wire gate closed …

Shut a second before the alien got there.

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

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

The outer door closed.

Safe! They were safe!

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

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

Where the fuck was the ship?!

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

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

Another elevator coming up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah,” she said, and then sighed. “Sorry. I got lost there for a minute.
Anyway, the last thing I
really remember is settling into sleep after LV-426, me and one of the soldiers
and a civilian, a little girl.
I—I guess the ship must have sustained some damage somewhere along the way.
I don’t remember

anything else. I woke up in a crowd of refugees on Earth six weeks ago, and they
were on their way
here; it seemed like a good idea— everything was falling to shit down there. So
I’ve only been here a
month longer than you have.”

Billie nodded. “So what did the medics say about the missing part? Physical
or psych damage?”

“I don’t do medics,” she said, smiling a little. “Besides, I feel fine.”
Ripley stood and stretched her arms over her head. “Want to walk with me to
dinner?”

Billie glanced curiously at the older woman as they headed toward the
cafeteria. She was the first
survivor, so far as anyone knew, to have seen the aliens and gone back for more.
Billie found herself
intrigued by Ripley’s relaxed, confident demeanor, a calmness that seemed
unlikely after all she must have
been through. Especially given her own experiences with the monsters. Even
after only two weeks here, it
seemed like a million years had passed.

They walked down C-corridor toward the nearest dining hall. There was a
viewing plate adjacent
to the hatchway that led them down another corridor; peering out the window
was a young couple, both
medtechs by the look of their IDs, holding hands and talking quietly. Billie saw
one whole stretch of the
station from her vantage point, long tubes set into spheres and cubes, assembled
like a giant child’s toy.
She shivered slightly from the cold as they neared the hatch. The station was
made from heavy plastic
and cheap lunar metals; heat came from baseboard heaters set along each
corridor, but the void outside
kept the corridors from ever really getting warm.
kept the corridors from ever really getting warm.

Apparently the newer modules were worse, exposed plastic beams and
cramped quarters with
poor facilities and lights. They had been slapped together to field the incoming
refugees from Earth, the
flood of people that had finally tapered to a trickle. Gateway Orbital Station now
held somewhere
around 17,000, almost twice the number it had been intended for—but it
wouldn’t need to hold many
more. As Ripley said, things were falling to shit down there.

Though it was early for dinner, the hall was crowded. There had been a
midday shipment of real
vegetables from one of the hydroponic gardens, and word had spread fast.

Billie and Ripley both got small salads of carrot and lettuce to go with their
meals. They sat at one
of the smaller tables near the entrance. In spite of the crowd, it was quiet; most
of the people on
Gateway had lost friends and family to the aliens on Earth. It was almost like
people were embarrassed
to laugh or have a good time. Billie could understand that.

She had spent much of her life in various psych wards, trying to convince
medtechs that the aliens
existed; the solemn atmosphere of the station was familiar, if not comforting.
She didn’t feel particularly at
home here, but then she’d never really had a home. At least her life wasn’t in
danger; that was something.
After the trip with Wilks, being safe seemed almost like a dream.

Ripley ate a bite of her heated soypro and made a face. “Tastes like insulation
that’s been
dehydrated, frozen, and reheated. Then spit on.”

Billie tasted her own, then nodded. “At least it’s warm.”

They ate quietly, each concentrating on her meal.

“So do you dream of her? The mother alien?”

Billie looked up from her tray, startled.

Ripley watched her intently. “I do,” she continued. “At least I did, before my
memory lapse.” She
took another bite of soypro.
“I—yeah. I do, too. I’ve heard that others have dreams….” Billie trailed off.
Yeah, she had heard

stories, mostly about fanatics, people who had turned their dreams of the
aliens into some kind of
religion; the Chosen who had realized that Judgment Day had already come.
She’d mostly kept quiet
about her own dreams, but recently … “I have them often. Almost every night.”

Ripley nodded. “It got that way with me, too. They started with her reaching
out, expressing love,
and turned into these. I felt a connection. They were transmissions. I knew where
she was, that she
wanted to gather her children to her. The queen of the queens, the driving force
behind the whole
goddamned species. I knew where to find her!”

She pushed her tray aside abruptly. “And I lost her.”

Billie nodded. “I knew I wasn’t the only one, but I haven’t had a lot of time to
think about it lately
and this station doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of group therapy sessions.”

Ripley smiled, a short, bitter expression. “I think I know what she’s waiting
for,” she said, “and I