Chapter Summary: Tend. Work. Rest. Tend. Work. Rest. A calm, placid, endless cycle of the Hive. But beneath the smooth surface of the hum of activity, the mind tends to wander, then: to wonder.
Tend cycle
Corporal Torres woke up to her worst nightmare.
Because Corporal Torres' worst nightmare was that she woke up at all.
It took her a few seconds to get her bearings, because everything was upside down, and all the blood rushing to her head was playing havoc with trying to think rationally, or at all, in this case.
But even if her nose had adjusted to the stench of bug, the tactile sensation of that hard, outer shell, and the unearthly coolness to the touch when she shifted her hand a hair's breath let her know she wasn't in Kansas anymore, Toto.
She never was in Kansas. She grew up in Los Angeles, but you get the point.
But that slight hand-shift, where she tried to be subtle, you know? – let sleeping bugs lie, or better yet: die – wasn't as subtle as she wanted it to be, because with one twist of the alien's tail, and the petals of the slimy flower they were encased in spiraled open, and the bug let go of the overhead with its feet because they were falling, falling, falling fast, right toward the deck.
Torres couldn't help herself. She screamed as they fell. And, at the very last instant, the bug shifted around and landed – thoom! – on its feet and its good arm, cradling Torres in the stump of the arm she blew off with her grenade.
Oh, yeah. She remembered that encounter. She thought she got it then, before she was overwhelmed by the others. She thought she got it this time, putting round after round into it. But the fucker wouldn't die, and – shocker! – didn't seem interested in killing her just yet. They killed Gunny to make a new bug. When was it going to be her turn?
In front of them loomed the huge beast, Satan motherfucking-himself, squatting on his haunches looking over the whole mess deck like it owned the damn place. Torres had seen some bugs, some bigger, some smaller, but she never had seen anything like this before.
She felt a vibration through her teeth and tickling the soles of her feet and looked keenly at the big beast. It didn't move, it just sat there and breathed like a forty-year-old fuck stalking girls coming out of high school, but, somehow, Torres wondered if that vibration came from it.
It did.
The Queen had just commanded One Arm to tend to the human.
"What do I do?" One Arm asked her Queen.
The Queen knew humans. The Queen had been with Newt since before One Arm joined the new Hive with this new Queen.
"You need to feed it," the Queen explained. "Every tending cycle: it eats, it excretes. This is their cycle."
One Arm examined the human. Every tending cycle it ate? Why didn't Newt have to? Was Newt different than humans? Newt had been with the Queen for years. Years! Cycle after cycle, and One Arm had never really observed Newt closely. Newt was the Queen's and that's all that mattered to the Hive.
But now that One Arm was assigned to tend to this human, she wished she had taken more notice of Newt and her ways, because she was now in totally foreign territory.
Feed the human. One Arm thought.
You didn't feed humans: there was never any need. You implanted them, you waited two cycles, and you let the liberated larval form feed off them.
Well, One Arm knew how implanting worked. She didn't have a seed in her, however, but she stored energy in herself that she burned very, very efficiently. Giving up any of that was counter to her nature. Self-preservation wasn't the primary concern for a Xenomorph, like it was for a human, but it was up there.
Eh, she thought: feed the human. Here goes.
You ever feed a human? It's easier done than said ... that is, if you don't care about the state of their internal organs after you 'fed' them. One Arm had accidentally killed a human with a flick of her wrist, and she held this 'fiercesome warrior' easily in her good arm, in fact, easily even with the stump of what remained of her other arm. If she did this wrong, the human would die. Of course, she had already preserved the human in the cocooned state, but she was comatose when she had done this. This was different.
But One Arm was never afraid of a challenge.
"Scared again, stumpy?" Second asked solicitously.
One Arm spared one snarl in Second's direction, then forced the human down on its knees and straddled it from behind, forcing its head back to clear a straight path down its feeding canal, just barely avoiding snapping its neck.
"Wha-..." Corporal Torres grunted in shock.
And that's when One Arm, her dome bowed down right over the human's head, opened her outer mouth, roaring like a lion in the human's face, and shot her inner mouth into the human's gaping mouth.
And she began to push her mouth, gently, but irresistibly, down into the human's throat.
To Corporal Torres receiving the treatment, 'gently' was a vicious lie. To her, she was being savagely throat-fucked by the bug, but instead of any in-and-out that might have given her the chance to breathe, to scream, to ... anything, the fucker just kept pressing its big fucking dick-mouth deeper and deeper down her throat. She tried to thrash, but the thing had her by the neck and her knees pressed down and locked onto the deck. Her flailing arms delivered glancing blows to the beast, but she had no leverage, and with its hard exoskeleton, she really would have only hurt herself more than it if she could have managed to land a solid blow.
She tried to breathe. She couldn't. Once again, darkness overtook her.
...
For the Xenomorph, the cycle was everything. One might think that all they did was attack, attack, attack, but, actually this was only a very small part of a Xenomorph's life cycle: only the very lucky few ever saw combat. For most xenomorphs, and for most of the time, they worked, slept, and tended. Much like a human: few ever saw combat, and most of their lives were filled with the mundane day-to-day routine. So xenomorphs, and the Hive, as a society, was very much like humanity, yes?
No. Of course not.
For, at a very basic level, biologically, the xenomorph was fundamentally different than a human being. A xenomorph is a constructed entity, a bioweapon, and, as such, was designed from the ground up to be both nearly perfectly efficient and almost entirely self-sufficient. A human wastes an incredible amount of energy simply by breathing. Did you know that? The translation process for a human of oxygen intake to be used to keep its cells alive and functioning is just so inefficient, using only one percent of the oxygen intake and respiring only one percent more carbon dioxide as waste, but, compared to a xenomorph, even that process, alone, is terribly inefficient, as human add an incredible amount of heat waste (that is to say: wasted energy), for, when a Xenomorph breathed in, it was to an end, and all possible uses of the intake were broken down and stored for use now or for later, when a xenomorph exhaled, it was a very high waste output, and that is why their breath stank: even when a human shit, a lot of that shit could have been used in a more efficient metabolic process. Xenomorphs didn't have this problem: xenomorphs didn't shit, nor sweat, nor even breathe out inefficiently. Xenomorphs didn't even emit (much) heat, and that made them so damn hard to track. Stealth technology? Xenomorphs didn't show up on infrared, and their 'skin'? Their exoskeleton was dull gray-green-black in color because a Xenomorph didn't reflect (much) light, even: they absorbed the photons and used that, even that, as energy to fuel them to their dread purpose.
So, a human, emitting all that noise of their heartbeat, and their loud, military-grade boots on the deck-plating, breathing, emitting heat and trying to sneak up on a Xenomorph? You see why it's the Xenomorph that so successfully hunted humans, and not the other way around.
And this was One Arm's confusion at the Queen's command to feed the human. A Xenomorph ate regularly at one, very brief, stage of development: from larva to full-grown worker or warrior, then, only when energy ebbs, like when crawling into a ship from the vacuum of space, or before or after a few glorious moments of combat. That was when a Xenomorph fed: only to replenish depleted energy-stores. So if you lose against a Xenomorph, you get eaten ... alive.
So don't lose.
One Arm regarded her human captive. It wasn't moving, it was odd that it was breathing. Why would you breathe if you don't have to be in motion? Humans were not confusing to One Arm, because she never considered them anything other than enemies to fight and kill, or hosts to implant. This human fit under neither category at present and so presented One Arm a conundrum: what to do with it now? What to do with it at all?
One Arm did not like conundrums. She liked everything to fit in its nice, neat little box.
One Arm looked to Second for guidance. "What do I do with it now?" she asked.
Second was her usual helpful-self. "Well, you could play paddycake with it? No, that's right, you can't, anyway, being down to one arm and all, so: half-a-cake?"
One Arm wasn't in the mood. "You know, on the scale of one to 'fuck off and die,' Second, you're right up in the 'about to get your face ripped off'-range."
Second chuckled. She could use a good fight right about now, herself. Nothing against her Queen, but this Hive was just too stodgy and boring. It wasn't that this Queen was a disciplinarian, nor was she dictatorial. No, the last queen was that, and vicious, too. But the last queen had no time to be asinine, as managing over one-hundred workers was just too much for her to handle, so she had to let a lot slide. With only two, then three members in this hive, this Queen had too many opportunities to be hands-on.
Second didn't like this: it cramped her style of just going out and killing shit. She got to do a bit of that when they took this vessel from the humans, but that was more than two whole months ago.
Since then, it had been pretty much smooth-sailing, that is to say: booooorrrriiinnnnngggg!
Second could use a good fight right about now.
But, no. Second could just see the human being trampled and torn underfoot as Second and One Arm had their fun. The Queen would not be pleased.
Second sighed. This Hive was all work and no play, but so it goes. "Well, it is your tend cycle," she told One Arm. "So, off you go. I'll watch the human. You do the rounds about the ship."
"No," the Queen said. Both Second and One Arm fell silent. "The human is to be with you at all times," she continued, addressing One Arm. "It is to be thus until the human is bonded with you. Take it with you as you go about your duties."
"Yes, my Queen," One Arm acquiesced immediately. "But, ..." she dared ask, "how will I know when it is bonded to me?"
The Queen chuckled, deep in her belly. "Oh, you will know! When it runs to you and not from you? When, instead of fighting you, it fights to hold you? Do you not remember how Newt is with me? When its very being is entwined with yours, in short, when you are bonded, when you know that you are bonded, and you don't have to ask, ... yes," the Queen nodded sagely, "that is when you are bonded. Right, Second?"
Second was distracted. "Yes, my Queen," she answered automatically, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
The Queen snarled a vicious smile. "Jealous, my dear Second?" she asked smugly.
"Of course not, my Queen!" Second replied, offended.
The Queen laughed easily. "You never did like Newt, did you."
"Not true," Second replied. It's not that she didn't ... like Newt. It's just that she never got her Queen's fascination with the immature host. She saw it all as a big waste of time and energy. And then, when Newt, the little human female matured, and suddenly their old Queen was instantly interested in disposing of the human rival, it all happened so fast! 'First' disobeying her Queen, abandoning the Hive and stealing Newt away, and then their bonding with 'First' herself maturing into a rogue Queen, stealing herself, the new Queen's old warrior companion, and then ten others, including One Arm, with the intent to overthrow the old Queen and take over the hive.
All because of one little human colonist that wasn't immediately implanted. Sure, it was too scrawny to host an injection of an egg, but, okay, just kill it then.
But no. And now this.
The Queen snorted. "Liar," she accused affectionately, "but you were always more diplomatic than I."
Second smirked. "Now, that is true," she agreed, but, even though she was outwardly easy, inside she still was in turmoil. 'This' was only getting worse, because her Queen, now bonded, was introducing it into her own Hive. She had the right to do that, of course, but it stung that she didn't share this plan with Second. Further, what was the point? Xenomorphs were built to be entirely self-sufficient, and then: incredibly efficient when working together in the eusocial structure of the Hive: both independent but also indomitable. Bonding a host to a worker? a warrior? Why expose a superior race to an inferior one?
It make no sense to Second at all.
"Second," the Queen commanded, snapping Second back to her duty, "don't you have a new pilot to train?"
"Yes, my Queen," Second replied crisply. "You," she directed at One Arm, "enough dallying: attend to your duties."
Shit flows downhill fast in the Hive.
"'You'?" One Arm hissed, but Second had already brushed past her, grabbing the runt and heading toward the bridge.
Teaching a new worker to pilot an alien interstellar vessel, Second thought darkly as she left, what could possibly go wrong?
None of this escaped the Queen. Second was a 'deep thinker.' The Queen had no use for this.
Inaccurate. The Queen had lots of use for this: between Second's 'deep thoughts' and One Arm's tactical brilliance in combat, the Queen was sitting on the foundations of a Hive that could actually win battles not just by overwhelming the enemy with surprise and superior numbers, for, if that were the case, she could have never entertained taking on the Hive on LV-426. A Hive that was bigger than her own nascent one ten times over.
But there were too many moving pieces the Queen had to deal with: One Arm's bonding, Second's deep thoughts, the insufficiency of the runt, and landing on a host homeworld, and striking out into that planet before the Hive was struck down itself.
And she missed Newt terribly. It was a constant itch she wouldn't scratch. She would not have Newt revived until she was certain of everything: getting her out of cryo, yes, but then, with a human? a runt? with unpredictable behaviors.
Too many things could go wrong, and what was infuriating the Queen was it was all taking far too long to fall into place.
When the Queen was pensive, she stilled herself, but it did not look like she were sleeping, at all, more like she sat, ... squatted, at the start line of a race, ready to leap forward to strike, to kill, to win.
The Queen needed victories, but all she was facing were delays.
She hissed toward One Arm. "Leave me."
One Arm scooped up the human in the stump of her right arm and backed away from her Queen, ferocious in stillness.