Chapter Summary: Just one last sweep of the host colony. Not much left, just two mature hosts, male and female, implanted without a fuss, but then there was a whelp not even big enough to be a morsel. What to do with it?
Breaths: even, steady, controlled, powerful.
First there was one worker-warrior. Then she captured a host.
Then there were two...
And from the two, we had our queen, and now the hive was unstoppable.
The hosts had foolishly recolonized LV-426, thinking ... what? We were exterminated?
Where there is one, and there are hosts, then there is all.
And besides: thinking?
Evolutionarily superfluous. We did not need it, we had strength, unity and complete discipline through absolute obedience. We obeyed our queen. We protected our queen. We systematically eliminated everything else.
Three of us were making a sweep on the outskirts of the host colony. Routine work. The hosts were slow, stupid and obvious, but some of them still tried to fight us. Some of them actually killed one of our number with their armor-penetrating carbine weapons before we easily overran them.
That warrior was replaced, twelve fold.
And this was not a military base of operation. The hosts were not military: they were colonists.
Cattle.
This sweep was nearly fruitless. All the hosts had been captured, confined and implanted, or so I thought.
But thought was superfluous. Our queen said sweep. We swept, and I, a worker-warrior of the hive, was also the best tracker.
It's not boasting, it's simply a fact, and that's why I was entrusted to lead this party-of-three.
On this pointless sweep. We had been through the host colony many times, uncovering every hiding place and smashing through every barricaded nest, or whatever these hosts called their artificial living units. The areas outside their colony was a hostile environment: they would not survive long with temperatures much lower than their warm blood. They had, actually, a longer survival rate in the hive, where the temperature was regulated to be 30°C at all times — nice and warm — perfectly hospitable for gestation and maturation of a larval form to maturity to a worker.
So our sweep of the host colony yielded nothing.
On the off-chance that we would find a few remaining hosts hardy enough, stupid enough, to try their luck outside their colony, we did a perimeter sweep.
And that's where we found them: one male, one female, one premature whelp of indeterminate gender.
The hosts had nearly equal numbers of males and females. Odd: they even seemed to have more males that females! I did not know how that ... worked. We had our queen; all the others were (female-suppressed/gender-neutralized) worker-warriors. The queen allowed one male to hatch, then mate with her when it reached maturity. During mating she killed and consumed it.
How could having more than one male possibly work in a society?
A mystery.
A mystery I did not ponder. I worked-tended-rested, worked-tended-rested in each daily cycle, for the good of the hive.
And now I worked.
Three hosts. Well, two hosts and one potential host when it matured.
They didn't even know what hit them. Their senses are dim, depending on radiation in the visible spectrum to be able to navigate their environments and to identify each other, and us.
They did not see us coming. It was dark. The dark did not hinder us. We do not 'see.' We do not have these big orbs that absorb and record reflected radiation like the hosts do.
Big, round useless orbs in the dark.
Stupid hosts, not honing themselves to kill, not hardening their exo-armor, so they had these layers of skin of polymers and cloth that molted from them so easily at the slightest touch of our claws.
In fact, the most difficult thing with these hosts was not killing them before they could be implanted with an egg. So easy to claw into their flesh and puncture internal organs so vital to them, so easy to rip off an arm or a leg as we transported them and have them go into shock and die before implantation took.
So difficult, these hosts, fighting us and getting killed, or dying before they were supposed to.
My sister-twin-sibling neutralized the male and carried him off, my sister-younger-sibling took the female, leaving me the whelp, who had just enough time to register our assault and cry out with an ear-piercing scream before I subdued it and joined my sisters in our return run to the hive.
This was a very good hunt: two more hosts when we thought there were no more. The queen would be pleased.
Second, my sister-twin hissed out: "A snack?" as she sensed the whelp grasped in my claws.
The three of us laughed as the hosts screamed. These hosts were very, very loud. That was annoying. Sometimes that annoyance led to a crushed larynx, which was a regrettable lost of a host, as they tended to die very quickly when they could not breathe anymore. But soon their screaming would be over: we were returning to the hive.
Well, at least they would die in the comfort of knowing they were instruments of our strength.
And they would be warm. There was that.
...
The hive. Deep in the bowels of what used to be the hosts' colony. It was dark. It was warm.
It was alive now. My sisters, hundreds of us, had transformed this metallic structure into a hive of living, moving mass of activity.
My sisters-of-the-hunt affixed the two hosts in the incubating chamber. I supervised them: this was my hunt, so I had to ensure its success. I had my sisters bring in two eggs just laid by our queen. Attachment of the vectors and implantation went without issue, as always. The vectors remained attached to the hosts' faces, as they would remain for hours, to ensure irrevocable attachment to their internal organs so the nutrients could be transferred from the hosts to the nascent larvae.
That done, we reported to the queen. I carried the whelp with me.
Perhaps the queen would want her: a little gift. Or maybe ... something else.
My brain tickled me.
I hate it when it does that.
...
"Our party located two hosts and this whelp," I held it away from my body which it had clung to tightly, as if holding onto me would protect it from the rest of the hive. "The hosts are implanted, and the hive should have two more fully productive workers by the end of the next three daily cycles."
The queen listened to my report, emoting nothing. Her pheromones were overpowering in the throne chamber, as they always were, subduing all before her in a compelling urge to submit and obey.
"Why did you not dispose of the runt?" she snarled.
I remained bowed, facing the ground, not the queen. Of course.
"If you wanted to consume it ... it is just a morsel, but the flesh is fresh and tender," I offered.
"I am not hungry," she screamed.
She was not displeased with me: she was the queen. She screamed; we whispered. She commanded; we obeyed.
"Can we make sport of it?" One of her guards entreated.
Being a guard was the most exalted position in the hive, after the queen, of course. But your exalted status gave you nothing. You stood in the presence of the queen. You did not work, no: you cast your contempt on workers, but all you could do is stand, ever ready to strike at any and all threats to the queen, should they arise, which never did. The queen would never be hatched until a hive was established and there were enough worker/warriors to have the hive and the surrounding territory completely under her dominion when she was hatched.
Several guards leaked mucus in anticipation: a bit of play, then a light, tasty snack afterwards.
"What sport is there in this whelp?" I put forward into the chamber.
"Silence!" the Alpha guard screamed.
Silence. The mood in the chamber suddenly became tense.
"What do you mean, First?" the queen demanded of me.
First: I was the first of the hive. I captured the first host and, together with my sisters, build our hive to allow for the ascension of our queen.
I kept my lowered posture. "This one is no sport," I explained. "It won't even last a second in a chase. And to what direction would it run?"
One of the guards laughed. "Perhaps it will run to you, and we can fight over the spoils, eh? Now that would be fun, to see how long you'd last against me, First."
The queen didn't even turn her head to the young guard speaking out of turn. But the guard, an adolescent, got the message. She did not bow, but she was on notice.
"You caught it," the queen said. Irrelevant, but nice of her to say. "What would you do with it?"
"My queen," I said, "the hosts came from the sky. Are there no more? Will more come in their metal transports? Will they carry new weapons? How many will come? How and where will they establish a base of operations? Do they know we have conquered this colony? Do they have a fall-back route?"
"A retreat!" A guard snarled, contempt echoing through the chamber.
The hosts were cowardly. They fell, they begged and screamed and, despite their weapons, they were powerless before us. All they were good for, the only purposed they served, was as material to build and to strengthen the hive. And with all their intelligence, they were too stupid to see that.
I had to smile with the guard in agreement with her, but still I pressed my point. "This whelp is the last of the colonists we have found. There are no more. I offer to study it to know its ways for the good of the hive."
"Daughter," the queen roared. "I determine what is good for the hive; you do not."
"Yes, my queen," I said humbly.
I was not her daughter, except by submission. Most of the rest of the hive were her daughters, so there was distinct tension between me and most of the rest of the hive, even though I contributed much to its establishment.
Heresy. I berated myself sourly. The hive existed because the queen exists, and vice versa. There was nothing else.
"Bring it here to me," the queen commanded.
I carried the small thing in my hand, less than a meter and a half in height to the queen.
As we approached the awesome presence, the hostling became more and more agitated, and when the queen used one of her smaller arms to lift the tiny one by its leg from my arms, it screamed continuously as it writhed.
The secondary skin of cloth fell over its head expositing its midsection, a very soft, very pale epidermis stretched over its skeletal structure barely protecting its internal organs. Its arms flailed wildly as it fought to free itself.
I wondered if it would do itself a harm in front of our queen. Some lower animals bit off their own limbs in their attempts to free themselves from our grasp. We let them do that sometimes: it was funny to watch them limp away for a few moments, bleeding profusely, until we recollected them for their true purpose in life.
This one did not do this.
"Noisy, aren't they?" the queen laughed, and the whole chamber laughed with her.
I did not laugh. I watched my queen.
She inspected the whelp, rotating it by its leg. "Scrawny little thing. Not even one bite!" She mused.
She dropped it onto the metal grating — crack! — cutting off the whelp's screams and struggles. It lay still, moaning softly.
The queen returned her attention to me. "You may amuse yourself with this for a time," she granted.
I waited.
"But this shall not interfere with your duties, and the second I hear of this runt causing any kind of disruption to the hive, the amusement ends, do you understand me?"
"Yes, my queen," I said to the floor.
"You are entirely responsible for this thing until I deem its use elsewhere. Any damage it does, I hold you to account, First."
"Yes, my queen," I repeated.
I made no move.
"I don't like this," she continued. "'Study it'? It smacks of thinking. I am only allowing this that there may be something useful to us from you extract from your so-called study, for you have proved your value to us in other areas. But do not make me regret my beneficence!"
"Yes, my ..." I began.
"Get this thing and leave my presence now!" the queen roared, impatiently cutting me off.
I scuttled forward, grabbing the whelp and left quickly.
The queen was always in a bad mood after she laid eggs: it took a lot out of her to generate the eggs, and then excreting them from her body was slow and painful.
Or put another way, the queen was always in a bad mood.
...
Rest cycle.
I didn't know what to do with it.
If I left it lying in the center of this work chamber, it might possibly wander off, trying to escape from the hive — an impossibility for it — but then another worker would come across it and either play with it, then eat it, or carry it off and attach it to a wall in the incubation chamber for implantation. Even though it was too small, obviously, some workers were stupid like that, so the hatchling would burst forth, half-formed, malnourished and have to be eliminated, wasting both the immature host and what could have been a useful worker otherwise.
I looked at the whelp sitting alone, whining, no fight left in it, looking back at me helplessly.
Normally I would scale the wall and encase myself in a cowl membrane; that way I'd be isolated and protected, the best way to spend the rest cycle, without distractions constantly rousing the fight reflex in me.
But this thing ... would it be able to rest itself if I carried it meters above this underground level, and hung it beside me? Would it slip out of the cowl and plummet to its death? Their dormancy was filled with constant movement as they reacted to internal stimuli from their oversized brains.
I didn't know what to do with it.
As I observed it, its moans became softer, and its head tilted forward as it drifted off.
Its head jerked up instantly, and it looked at me with wide, wide eyes.
Amused at its antics, I laughed. It was a sound it could not distinguish from my inaudible breathing.
These hosts were just so silly!
As soon as it jerked itself awake, again it was already slumping over in its seated position.
I just watched it now.
Soon, it was curled up into a ball on the deck plating, and its breaths slowed, calmed, and became even and regular.
It was dormant.
But now what?
I huffed out a sigh. I leave it here, it would be picked up by another worker, doing its work, expanding the hive, or else it might wake and run off. Would I notice it from my rest directly above it?
Probably.
But possibly not.
And that possibility irked me.
I crawled toward it, stalking, silent as the grave, and wrapped myself, a much, much bigger ball around the little ball fitfully resting now inside my protective circle, my tail closing off the circle completely, snaking up from between my legs, covering its back and coming to rest on the dome of my head.
My breaths synched with the whelp's as I eased carefully into rest cycle: slow, steady, powerful ones somehow matching the tiny breaths of the tiny creature wrapped within my protective circle.
A/N: This is not the Aliens-story you are looking for. Move along.
Seriously.
You've come here to watch Ripley kick alien-ass and then get her freak on with Call in time for tea. Or you've come to read aliens ripping off faces, getting blown up, then possibly ripping off more faces and guts. This is not this story. This story is a `phfina-story, which means uncertainty and angst, which, as you can already see, may have our protagonist ('First') in its steely grasp.
Not only is it not that story, but it's also a story that has lots, and lots, and lots of stuff that girls do: which is think-think-think and talk-talk-talk ... even if m'girls happen to be mucus-spitting, acid-bleeding, claw-ripping xenomorphs.
And what, precisely, is it, `phfina, that girls think about all day every day?
Oh, texting their friendies about their hair and nails, right? Amirite? Amirite?
Um ... no, the aliens aren't going to be texting their friendies about their hair and nails, they're going to be talking and thinking about ... oh ... something else ... uh, huh.
`phfina looks away, pure innocence wreathing her face. Uh, huh. Yeah.
And one little Newt caught in the middle of it all.
Not your story. Really. So don't expect it to be.
You have been warned.
ps: It's marked Sci-Fi/Family because this is a 'syfy' story not heavy on the science, but science is permeating the air breathed by the characters here, but it does not drive nor concern them in this story (nor did it, for that matter, drive or concern the characters in the movies), and it's marked family because ... well ... we'll find out why, now won't we!
"It takes a village ..." and all that.