Predator: Huntress - Alpha

Chapter 1

With her back pressed to the wall, Justice controlled her breathing and listened to the sounds of the group of people she was running with pass her by. Something had seemed wrong when she scanned the ship ahead. Relief should have flooded her nervous system with endorphins at the sight of the ship--the last ship on LV549. But her instincts had burned hot and bright in the back of her brain, forcing her to clutch the bundle at her chest tighter and veer suddenly off course. Some of the people she had been running with slowed and gave her a frantic questioning look before snatching their gazes away impatiently, their will to survive demolishing any sort of camaraderie they may have had as they sprinted towards the ship.

Looking down at the round pair of innocent eyes nestled between her breasts, Justice slipped her hand through the makeshift carapace shield and ran her fingers lovingly across the tiny warm scalp and the black silken curls covering it. Turning her head to the side, Justice looked back up towards the hangar as the group of survivor's footsteps tromped noisily against the metal bridge. It was too quiet. After days and days of inhuman screeching and the very human cries of terror and agony coating the air of LV594, now all of a sudden it was quiet? Now the last drop ship on the planet was just an island of safety, docked serenely at the hangar? Like hell it was, Justice thought with a sneer of anger, her own flare of hope she foolishly let ignite guttering and snuffing out entirely with her anger. Not bothering to wait for the inevitable, she clutched the bundle to her chest tighter and raised the rifle with the other, and ran in the opposite direction.

She was crossing the narrow catwalk that bordered the underside of the bridge that led back towards the colony's storage facilities when the screams started. Running faster and quieter, Justice pulled the shitty tech's helmet back over her face. It wasn't her helmet, but it was getting the job done. Out of the seven hundred plus colonists that lived on this planet, Justice was almost certain only a tiny fraction of that were still alive--for now. All of them now half-dead hosts for the invading force that arrived on a distressed ship that wasn't properly quarantined. Slipping onto the storage facility's ladder, Justice awkwardly shouldered the gun while keeping a comforting hand on the squirming bundle of life strapped to her chest and made her way up. Going inside the building was no longer an option. A lot of things were no longer an option, she mentally snorted in disgust.

For four days since she activated the planet's alarm, sleep had not been an option. For four fucking days, she had been stuck on one side of the colony, away from the dorms where everything she needed was stored. Between running through the day, avoiding the main corridors that were rife with monsters and their face-hugging fucking spawn, and stopping to feed her own doe-eyed spawn, she was down to only one option. The option that was now no longer an option she could avoid, and what she had wanted nothing more to do since the moment she saw the slick black surface of the xenomorph's head appear on the camera. On the storage building's roof, Justice crouched and stared out at the colony below. Like the legs of a spider, the corridors branched out towards silver domed structures, each one different in their purpose: the main engineering hub, the common areas, sanitation, various science labs, greenhouses, logistics, and namely the dorms.

If she could get to her dorm then get through to the labs where half a dozen escape pods still sat uncompromised, she could get off this swarming planet. But the labs were no doubt a thriving hive nest by now. Justice imagined the bodies of the science officers plastered to the walls covered in sticky, pellucid xenomorph secretions, and she let out a steady breath. Justice would need her suit in her dorm if they were going to make it through that. With her suit and her gun, she would carve her way through that nest in seconds. Taking a deep breath, she looked to the benign-looking dorms in the distance. Also most likely rife with serpent-like aliens, just waiting for her to fall for the human lure of comfort and safety their domiciles provided, just like they waited in hiding at the drop-ship behind her. Intelligent and hungry, the disgusting creatures had laid a trap for the last group of survivors. Looking down at her chest, Justice stared into the silent infant's familiar brown eyes, and she felt the diaminium skeletal frame in her body harden as her mind formulated a plan.One way or another, she was going to get her daughter off this planet.