Aliens: The Royal Hives

Chapter 2: Reject problems

Malcolm took a seat in the corner of the table and looked at Williams and just listened. 'Gentlemen, as you maybe have heard the general contacted us earlier this day and he's not happy about what we have done yet. We reported we have been able to turn a subject to life, but every test resulted turned in a failure due to unstable development in the cloning process causing the subject to have missing or dislocated limps or being a complete misshaped mess.' 

When Malcolm listened to this, he immediately had a vision of last week where the experiment had an arm growing on the subject's head and an oversized leg and previously one of them just exploded in the cloning tube and causing the area to get heavily damaged and having organs and other body parts all over the place. He started to feel sick because it looked so bizarre an unsettling and it was just...

When suddenly: 'Hey dr. Joseph, I don't care what you do in your free time but no day dreaming during work okay!' Malcolm jumped and began to apologies like he was a little kid. 'Sorry sir, what did you want me to tell?' Alex replied. 'What is the current status of the experiment?' 

'Well test subject number 4 has been unsuccessful. The subject ended in the same unstable state as before, we had no choice but to dispose of it,' Malcolm said. 'Thank you, Mr. Joseph. Okay you heard what he said we still haven't been able to make a stable development. Can anyone of you tell me why you haven't fixed that?' Williams was always demanding and he never blamed himself even though he was supposed to have control over the experiment.

Nobody wanted to say anything but then David, one of Malcolm's colleagues, stood up and started to speak like he had prepared for a speech. 

'We almost have stabilized all parts of the cloning process. It's just hard to make something new out of mixed DNA from other organisms from different species. I mean it's hard to separate both DNA parts correctly and make end result stable, we are trying to keep the development in order but one miscalculation can already be lethal.' 

Williams gave a sarcastic smile and asked. 'When do you think I can expect the subject to be fully operational?' He asked. 'If everything goes well, I think within two weeks and that's all I can give you.' David had already enough, he was even unsure about what he told, but Williams seemed to take it. 

'Well it better be good, Schutter. We are losing time here. The monsters are crawling all over the planet and the ones we captured are already hard enough to contain. If we don't succeed our fate will be decided by those military authorities.'

David sat down and focused while Alex continued his speech. 'Now listen up gentlemen. We have already learned that the monsters reproduce by putting an embryo in people's chest with help of those spider like creatures which are being called face huggers by our lab boys.

We also know that one nest is led by some kind of Queen. So, if we send in the weapon to kill the Queen they cannot reproduce and the nest is gone. But so far, we have not been able to make it successfully produced. We will start again within two days and I hope for you that it will work this time.'

The meeting ended shortly afterwards and David asked Malcolm if he could see him in his office later. 

'Sure. I'll see you later.'' He went back to office, took a seat in his chair and waited. It didn't take very long because David came in after only a few minutes. He sat down in front of Malcolm at his desk and said. 'We need to talk about the experiment. What about it?' Malcolm asked. 'I don't think that the next subject number will be successful. Why do you think so? We haven't found out all the problems and if we do it now it will be like a gamble.' Malcolm saw in David's expressions that he was not kidding. 'I don't think we have much of a choice,' Malcolm replied. 'Yes, I know but maybe it will be successful this time or it will end up the same way as the other times.'

Malcolm and David finished their conversation and David left the office. Malcolm turned around and looked outside his window. It was about to get dark even though it just became evening. The sun disappeared under the landscape of rocks from the planet that was now populated by dangerous monsters. He wasn't really worried about them walking around but more about them escaping. Malcolm stood up closed his window shutter and locked the entrance of his office. He looked in the other rooms to see if nobody was there.

He then turned to his bedroom and reached for a vent on the wall in the corner of his room. He crouched down and removed the grid. He reached out his hand and pulled out two pulse rifles. He had hidden some weapons in his room that he stole from the armory and they never found out. He already had one pistol locked up in a safe which was given to him by his boss but he was always worried about the safety of his working place so he kept them in the vents in case something bad would happen and he needed to defend himself. He gave a good look at them to see if they were still okay. He obviously didn't fire the rifles for testing. Without firing he saw that they were okay and put them back in place. He closed the vent and set down on his bed. He was exhausted but he decided to try to not lose himself and he began to feel normal again.

He later went to the mess hall to have some dinner. When he arrived most of his colleagues were already sitting at the table. He sat down and listened to the others who were having some conversation he missed. 

'Hey Joseph, you remember that exploring trip we had last week and strange cave we found?' The cave his buddy was talking about they found during an exploration they had a week ago. When they were exploring the planet under high protection they stumbled upon a cavern. With caution they had entered it and found something rather big. It was quickly revealed to be a nest belonging to the aliens that were inhabiting the surface. However, in the tunnels was nothing and the nest seemed abandoned. No aliens, no eggs, no corpses or any other remains. But what they found were some  remains of fast growing structure the aliens used for their nest. Besides that, they left with nothing that was useful for their research or something they could use for the experiment. He didn't really care about it now. To his surprise Francine sat down next to him and smiled. They both didn't say much and just continued their meals.