Xenomorphic

Chapter 2: Built For the Kill

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It was a world of darkness and wind. A distant planet recently terraformed and colonized. The total number of people on the planet was 158, all of them living in a base known as Hadley's Hope...

The people called the planetoid Acheron...most knew it as LV-426.

One family was sent by their employers to investigate an unknown alien craft near the Ilium Range. The father returned to the base pregnant with one of my sisters. 'What...? My sister...?'

They put the man into the medical ward and tried to remove the Royal Facehugger. They quickly learned why that was a bad idea. They left the man in the ward and told the family he was going to be alright. A lie.

The man later died when the Queen was born from his body. And it was all down-hill from there. The Queen matured and returned to the craft, gathered more of my sisters-again, what?-and created the Hive. Within hours, the Hadley's Hope Colony had become a crypt. The colonists fought back of course, but it was far too late...my sisters'-why do I keep calling them that?-coordination was far superior to that of the humans'. Their hive mind gave them a lethal advantage over the colonists' last desperate attempt at survival.

'My body...is tingling...it feels strange...'

With their claws, they ripped the humans apart. 'My hands...'

With their tails, they speared them like fish. 'My spine...'

With their jaws, they bit them into pieces. 'My mouth...'

With their dorsal tubes, they were able to sense the humans' positions and act accordingly. 'My back...'

Colonial Marines soon showed up to Hadley's Hope. Unlike the colonists, these men and women actually posed a threat. So different tactics had to be used. The Marine's leader was weak-willed and inexperienced...the Queen was able to manipulate him with ease.

Scott Gorman, under the influence of the Queen and his own nerves, ordered the Marines to hand in their ammo clips before entering the Hive. They were unprepared to face my sisters in combat.

Unfortunately, some of them escaped the Hive, but most were either captured or killed. The Queen studied the remaining humans...and the android...devising a way to destroy them and eliminate the threat they posed.

The humans were smart, blocking off the ventilation shafts with steel plates and setting up turrets in front of the doors. But cutting the power gave my sisters an advantage...darkness. They assaulted the humans, and while many were lost, victory was still attained. Two of them were dead and three were captured. But the woman's bravery was as shocking as it was infuriating. She entered the Hive...and destroyed the Queen's eggs. The Queen freed herself from her egg-sack and gave chase in search of vengeance. She stowed away on the human ship, and when they thought they were safe...she struck!

But the woman once again proved herself to be beyond average for her species. She fought the Queen with a machine augmenting her strength and threw the Queen into space...but it wasn't over.

My sisters had survived the explosion of the colony reactor and a new Queen was born. But with a new Queen came new threats. Weyland-Yutani had come to LV-426 and captured the Queen for research and study. Any other species would have died under the experiments the scientists conducted, but not my sisters. We were born to survive-to endure!-no matter what. And we succeeded.

The Queen was free once more and my sisters claimed the planetoid as their own. Of course the humans fought back, but they were fighting an uphill battle. One which they claimed with a pyrrhic victory: the new Queen was killed by the humans, but the planet was infested beyond recovery.