ALIENS: NEW BLOOD
PROLOGUE
The nest was silent around her, resting while she slept once more, her body healing in the miasma of pheromones and jelly that washed over her body in her cocoon. Her body had been ravaged by a relentless barrage of gunfire, explosions, exposure to the hard vacuum of space on more than one occasion, and a battle for dominance between herself and a usurper to her brood that had ended with the death of the pretender to her throne.
In her sleep, she dreamed; of the creatures that had destroyed countless numbers of her children; the same potential hosts that had slipped through her claws on numerous occasions. She would never see them again, but in her mind she could picture the death of each of them, envisioning each one giving birth to another glorious member of her hive.
Hatred and vengeance wasn't something she was naturally familiar with, but like most of her kind, she was quick to understand and learn, even while she slept.
Draped over the sarcophagus she had created around herself, her protectors slept, too. The strongest of her children that had survived the genocidal warfare that had gripped the hive for a few devastating minutes, those that had hurled themselves unquestioningly into battle, absorbed the residual overspill of the queen's nutrient-rich soup. As they slumbered, their minds and bodies altered, too: an elite gathering of specialised creatures that would protect the hive and their queen at all costs.
She had learned from her experience, her mistakes, and the losses she had suffered because of these. Evolution was the key to survival, and the survival of the hive was her only concern.
Outside around the hibernating creatures, the military vehicle the hive nestled in rumbled and groaned, shuddering as it and the giant ship it was tethered to, the craft that she had left in pursuit of the hosts that had ravaged her original hive, streaked closer and closer to the planet it was destined to crash on. In hours, both crafts and the creatures within would be nothing more than debris and dust scattered across the planets surface.
But the hive slept on, oblivious of the oblivion…