We'd been following our Xenomorph guide now for almost four hours, I could tell he was intentionally going slower than he usually would have to allow us to keep up with him, and he was right to do so seeing as we didn't have his natural grace. Sure we were a lot more graceful than normal humans but we weren't anywhere near a true Xenomorphs level of coordination.
About twenty minutes into our journey we'd come across the entrance into the hive, or so we thought. It turned out Willow's 'hollow mountain' theory was right. We were in fact in an underground cave or tunnel, I couldn't really tell since the walls were covered in secreted resin with various human remains sticking out of them. It was kind of creepy at first, but after a while it started to feel...cosy. It may sound strange but I guess the Xenomorph half in me just felt at home here.
We'd been walking for miles and occasionally meeting a drone or two going about its 'duties'. We'd now come up to another drone that was gluing some eggs down with resin in front of ten marines that had survived the attack, I couldn't really say I pitied them, they'd tried to take Jenny and myself into custody where they'd most probably discover who and what we are. That would have been a worse fate then what these sorry bastards were getting now. Yup, sucks to be them.
We'd continued onwards for a few more miles and the cave suddenly opened outwards. We were now in a rather large chamber containing an underground spring, this must be one of their primrary sources of water, which was good news for us. We stopped and began refilling our water bottles. Our guide had stopped and was watching us with his head cocked in what looked like a gesture of curiosity, however Willow had informed us years ago that Xenomorphs did this when communicating with each other. Obviously he was informing his Queen of what her 'guests' were doing. He didn't try to stop us or get angry he simply watched us. James was giving our guide accusing glances every now and then, like he was sure it was leading us to our doom but there was little we could do now, if they did want us dead then so be it. There was no hope of stopping them with what little make-shift weapons we had on us.
Once all our bottles were full (the ones we carried on our belts and the bigger bottles in our backpacks) we set off again. Our guide was now joined by a larger warrior class of Xenomorph. It hissed at us and walked in front of our guide. Well it made sense, we wouldn't exactly be expected to walk unguarded when we reached the more sensitive regions of the hive, but what were those regions and how close were they.
My questions were answered when we entered the egg chamber, there were a lot of skeletal remains on the walls here and not all of them human. There were a number of large animals that seemed to have been dead for months, even years. It begged the question of how long had this hive been active and how had it not been noticed by humans earlier? We continued to walk through the egg chamber cautiously, not wanting to accidentally cause one of the eggs to 'hatch'. But there was something odd about this chamber, there weren't nearly as many eggs as there should be, sure they could of had a major population explosion recently but there should still be some left over eggs still open that hadn't been cleared out yet. It was an enigma to be sure.
We thankfully left the egg chamber without a single one of us with a facehugger attached to our person. This made me feel slightly better about the Queen's intentions towards us, but I wasn't letting my guard down for one second. If they wanted to kill us then we were gonna do our damndest to take as many of them with us as we possibly could.
I noticed Jenny next to me pondering some of the same things I was, she was obviously worried about the safety of the others and about an all too obvious meeting she and the rest of us were going to have with this hive's Queen. Our guide and his warrior friend were rounding a corner when I heard a near deafening shriek. I suddenly felt unbearable pain coursing down my spine and I fell to my knees. I noticed the others doing the same.
I glanced around the corner and saw our guide and the warrior were also on the floor writhing around in pain. Through the agony it suddenly came to me, the Queen was hurt...no more than hurt, for this to effect the other Xenomorphs so badly it must be near fatal...my god...the Queen was dying! That explained why there were so few eggs. Was that why she'd summoned us? Did she think Jenny would take her place? But she can't lay eggs...surely the Queen knows this, Xenomorph Queens have in the past shown incredible near human level intelligence if not more so. She must know that a Human-Xenomorph hybrid isn't built to lay eggs, at least we weren't.
The pain was finally leaving us and we began to pick ourselves up. Our guide and the warrior too were up, they were obviously concerned for their Queen from the way they were swaying their heads from side to side as if trying to comfort her with their telepathic affection. Soon they began walking onwards towards the core of the hive and we followed.
Forty-Five Minutes Later
We'd finally arrived at what we believed was the Queen's chamber and what greeted us was more of a shock than the realization that the Queen was dying. This chamber was huge at least the same size as Colony Eight. We were obviously in the centre of the mountain now and what we were looking at was a large pyramid. It looked somewhat Egyptian in style there was something that said it was more than that and that it was older. Much older.
Standing on either side of the steps that lead up to the pyramid were two humanoid statues, but they looked anything but human. They appeared to be carved from the mountain itself and stood as two giant pillars supporting the weight of the mountain above us. They appeared to be wearing some kind of basic armour on their chests, a loincloth and some kind of mask. One was holding a spear while the other a small disk like object. They both had some kind of cannon-like weapon on their left shoulders. They could have possibly been natives of the planet long ago and been wiped out by the Xenomorphs, but if that were the case then why build a temple under a mountain? It didn't seem to be millions of years old, more like a few thousand. Why weren't there any signs of an ancient civilisation on the planets surface? There should be, for a civilisation to be able to build this under a mountain they should have first been able to build something outside of it.
My musing were interrupted when a drone behind me pushed me forwards gently. I began climbing the steps with the others and noticed that there weren't just a few Xenomorphs...oh no...there were HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS!They surrounded the base of the temple in a slithering mass of black bodies. If the Marines were here to raid the hive then they were going to be slaughtered and the colonies would be next. I'm glad mom had left, I don't want her to become a host to a Xenomorph, but I had no problem with everyone else in the colony becoming one.
After climbing for a good five minutes we'd finally reached the top. And it was huge. It was even bigger than the Egyptian pyramid at Giza. We continued onwards walking past the large doors and into the temple. There were more statues of the humanoids in here and heiroglyphs depicting them fighting the Xenomorphs. Odd, they'd build a temple for the Xenomorphs, did they revere them as gods or something? Well it wasn't that strange, Grandpa-Frank had told me a few years ago that quite a few researchers had gone mad, believing that Xenomorphs were gods or were the perfect biological creature that had escaped Eden to be with man. They'd had to be taken away when they started offering themselves as 'sacrifices'. From then on Cat-Scans and psychological assessments were a monthly requirement.
We went on, passing the occasionally drone or warrior and one or two dead bodies stuck to the wall. Then we passed another egg chamber, this one was worse than the last. It had only half as many eggs in it. I noticed something on the wall, stuck next to a rotting skellington that had been hanging there for years. It was a mask, like one of those that statues wore. I walked up to it and noticed it had been stuck next to this skellington as if it were a trophy. That's when I took a closer look at the skellington and what it was wearing. It was ugly whatever it was. It had four mandibles instead of a mouth and it was huge. Must have been at least eight or nine feet when alive and...wait...it was wearing...a loincloth? It was one of the humanoids that the statues represented! A closer inspection showed that it didn't have a shoulder cannon. It either didn't have one or lost it, but it did have one of the disks stuck to its belt. I decided to take it with me, if it was a weapon then it might come in handy if things went pear shaped with the Queen.
Whilst continuing on I examined the disk trying to find how it worked. Nope, not working for me. I looked behind me searching for the right person.
"Hey Danny!" He looked towards me, obviously a little worried and a little bored. He had nothing to tinker with and I had just the thing to keep his mind of anything bad that might happen. "Here, see if you can figure out if this disk still works. I got it off the dead body of a creature that looked like one of the ones from those statues we saw on the way in. It could be a weapon, a fairly high-tech one at that. See if you can find if it still works, might come in handy."
"Sure thing Mike!" He snatched the disk from my hands and went to work examining it with one of his tools. He began smiling like an idiot from the chance to study any form of alien tech and of course James was at his side within seconds at the mention that it could be a weapon.
Moving on our guide had lead us through several different chambers, one had several stone slab like beds, all currently occupied by dead humans. Ancient dead humans. They all appeared to have died from chestbusters. But they weren't tied or glued down, it almost looks like they went willingly. The next chamber was covered in more rasin and lead downwards towards the core of the temple, possibly where the Queen lived.
We continued down, now we had two warriors with us, one in front and another behind. There were obviously a lot of Xenomorphs in the temple itself from the amount of hissing and gentle skreeing that we heard. And now, at long last we'd reached the Queen's chamber. I was hoping there weren't anymore surprises. I looked back at Danny, he was still working on the disk. I poked him once and told him to put it in his bag, if it was a weapon and the Queen recodnized it then that may give off the wrong message. He complied and I hurried back to the front of the group to stand next to Jenny. She smiled at me weakly, she was nervous, I could tell. But there was no turning back now. We walked into the Queens chamber and were greeted by a strange sight.
The Queen was sitting like a dog would on her hind legs. She wasn't connected to an egg sack like I'd expected. She looked at each of us, examining us. She hissed gently at our guide, he turned around and went behind Jenny and myself. He pushed us both towards the Queen.
She lowered herself down so her head was level with our own. She hissed again and this time twelve drones dropped from the walls and grabbed the others, restraining them. Jenny and I turned to look but then I heard her scream. I looked back and to my horror I saw the Queen's spiked tail piercing Jenny's shoulder. It wasn't in deep but it was enough to inject her with neurotoxin. The Queen retracted her tail and Jenny fell to the ground. I grabbed her as she fell. I heard James shouting for me to look out, but it was too late. I felt the tip of the Queens tail pierce my shoulder too and I felt burning pain filling my body.
I fell to the ground and noticed Jenny convulsing next to me, I was about to reach out for her when I too began convulsing. This wasn't right! Neurotoxin wasn't meant to have this kind of effect on you. Jenny looked towards me as her eyes rolled back into her head and she passed out. I too was about to pass out, but just before I did I noticed one of the drones push Suzie towards the Queen as she readied her tail for another victim.
Authors Comments
As you may have noticed a little bit of the AVP Movie inspired this chapter, but that's as much in common this story has with THAT movie. It had a few good action sequences, but overall was poorly directed. Anyway, we'll be hearing more about the Predators later on, but for now I'm concentrating on the Marines and Aliens.
Also, in Alien: Ressurection that Marines on the Auriga did use energy based weapons. The reason for that was because they were in space and didn't want to blow a hole in the hull. When dealing with Xenomorphs it's best to use Pulse Rifles with standard ammunition, tried and tested by the Colonial Marines in Aliens, even if they did eventually get their bottoms kicked. Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy this latest addition to the story.