Chapter 7: Scarlet Hooks
Hooks stepped into a large, dark room. The floor was made entirely of sand. The predator waited for someone to speak.
"Enter clan leader." gurgled one of the hidden members of the room. "You have been summoned to undertake a very, very important mission. Because of your valor in the hunt, we have chosen you for this job as only you can do it."
Hooks had been busy since his encounter with Scarlet. The predator had decided to avenge his father by wiping out the red queen's lair, but this would require a predator force the likes of which nobody had ever seen, a force that could only be assembled by a great clan leader. So Hooks set out to prove himself by breaking many predator records. He was famous for taking dangerous missions and using as few predators as possible to accomplish them. At one point he single-handedly killed and took the skulls of three Gro'Teks, a truly remarkable feat as the previous record took five predators to take down one. Hooks had also beaten his father's record by capturing 98 alien queen skulls, knowing which skull he would take as his 100th.
The elder spoke again, "A predator has been captured, alive, by humans. According to our laws he must be destroyed for the pride of our clan. I ask you to do your duty: kill the predator and the humans that captured him, and take their skulls back. If you accomplish this task, the rewards will be great."
Hooks nodded in reply and began his hunt.
Scarlet slept in her hive, her head retracted into her crown. The many worker aliens buzzed around the hive, taking hosts into the nest, hunting the planet's many prey items. Scarlet had allowed some of the strong animals that Masich had brought with him to breed, and as a result the planet was constantly full of stronger hosts. The hive was thriving.
One of the various scouting troops that consisted of a Carrier alien and two drones stumbled upon a huge aircraft. The doors of the spaceship opened, revealing something all too familiar to the aliens: exo-suits. This time there was more than one; indeed, there was practically an army of them! Dozens of suits began to march through the forest, searching for aliens. The scout troop tried to escape, but they were soon discovered and trapped.
Mere minutes later, Scarlet was awoken by a panicking drone alien that clambered into the nest screeching a warning. The aliens rose to attack the new threat, only to be thwarted by the exo-suit army. Their claws weren't sharp enough to slice through the new version's armor, and soon nearly half the nest was in nets. The surprise army tried to attack the robotic weapons, only to be met by an opposing sneak attack by the remaining members of the army. Even the ravagers were stopped dead in their tracks. Scarlet snarled as her attempts at security, her traps, her tricks, all of her ingenious ideas were defeated by four dozen acid proof humanoid tanks. She closed her eyes as an electro-net fell upon her...
The queen alien woke up in a white room of a space ship. There were a few cameras in the room, four windows about twenty feet above her, but no doors. She wondered how she had gotten into the room.
A man walked up to one of the windows. He was Dr. Rupert Spenalzo, a famous scientist when it came to xenomorph biology. Spenalzo, though a genius according to human standards, was a bit... odd. The man had insisted in putting an intercom in Scarlet's room, despite the fact that the alien queen couldn't understand a word he would say.
"What a magnificent specimen you are." the scientist cooed. "That red crest is stunning. We've been studying you for hours, you know. According to xenomorph intelegence tests, you border on the lines of a super genius! Do you understand that? We're not sure if it has anything to do with your crest or not, but it doesn't really matter if it does or doesn't."
Scarlet tried to jump and attack the man, but was caught in midair by a robotic hand that seemed to stem from nowhere.
"Tut tut!" Spenalzo laughed. "You can't escape, my dear. That robotic hand has been programmed to grab you in case you break the invisible barrier I've set up. Now why don't you lay some eggs or something?"
In the other room, a group of scientists were studying a captive predator. They had drugged the monster to keep it from trying to escape or commit suicide during their operations. Unknown to them, an invisible fiend had entered the room. Their screams off pain were short, mainly because their killer made a point of decapitating them. The predator turned off his cloaking mechanism, revealing his hooked gauntlets.
The predator on the table chuckled (an effect of the gas) as his "savior" approached. Hooks rammed two hooks into the throat of his fellow predator, tearing off the filth's skull. He continued to mutilate the creature.
Then he turned to the one scientist he had left alive, saying in a gurgling voice, "Grwhere isr your lreaderg?"
The scientist stumbled through his words, "H... he... he's in the next r... rroom!"
Hooks scowled as he tore apart the human, turned on his cloaking device, and jumped up into the ventilation shaft that would pass into the next room.
When he jumped out of the ventilation shaft he was instantly surrounded by four exo-suits. The suits armed their pulse lazers as a man in a white lab coat chuckled.
"Sorry, it seems I've broken your little predator code, or should I say codes. I'm using the genetics that I extracted from your now deceased friend (who I assume you've killed) to create something nobody has ever thought possible: a predalien queen. They say only pureblood aliens, a.k.a ones derived from praetorian eggs, can become queens. And without my tampering, that would have been true. But by combining a queen alien's DNA, a predator's, and for good measure, a predalien's, I was able to accomplish the impossible: a Predalien queen! Think of it: a queen that grows stronger with each battle and produces offspring with the same trait. Predwarriors, preddrones, predfacehuggers, you name it! The ultimate weapon! We'll use it to fight your species first." Spenalzo was laughing maniacally now. "We'll kill you all! We'll wipe you species from existence by using your own DNA against you! AHA HA HA HA HA HA!"
Dr. Spenalzo snapped his fingers, which caused the exo-suits to throw Hooks through the front window. He screamed as he fell through the glass, holding onto the window frame with his oversized, hooked gauntlets.
Scarlet saw her chance. The red queen jumped and grabbed Hooks' feet, using her tail to chop the robotic hand in half. The giant alien used Hooks like a ladder, jumping into the room to confront her human nemesis. Hooks was pissed at the alien: he'd kill her next. He strained to lift himself up. Then something unexpected happened. Scarlet's tail slithered out the window towards Hooks and then went still, as though it was waiting for the predator to grab on. Hooks, already bewildered and confused, decided to forget his logical warnings against doing such a thing and grabbed on. Scarlet lifted the predator into the room. It was uncharacteristic of an alien to show pity, compassion, or gratitude, but then there were lots of things that made Scarlet different from her species.
The dangerous duo began to search for the doctor. At last they spotted him and the four exo-suits in an elevator. The two monsters ran to stop him, but they were too late. Then they spotted another elevator right next to the one Spenalzo was using. Scarlet ran toward it and pressed the "down" button (she had figured out how to use this machine when Masich attacked). The doors opened and she got in. Hooks, on the other hand, hesitated. If he went with the red queen, he'd be working with his archenemy, a most displeasing idea. However, if he didn't he'd fail the mission, which was also a very painful thought. He decided that working with her wasn't as bad as failing the mission, and thus the truce was struck.
A human was in the elevator that Scarlet and Hooks had decided to use. Scarlet ignored him; she was a queen and as such it wasn't her job to collect hosts, so attacking the man didn't seem like a priority to her. Hooks had already used his sophisticated predator technology to tell whether the human had ever come in contact with the captured predator. Since the human hadn't, Hooks didn't have to kill him and decided not to. So the three species sat there in the elevator. The human, who was scared to death, was relieved when his floor finally came. He left the elevator and looked back at Hooks and Scarlet, who waved at him (Hooks knew it was a human custom and made Scarlet do it).
They had gone through each floor searching for the man. Scarlet wanted to kill him for locking her up. Finally they came to the deepest basement of the space shuttle. There was Spenalzo in a gigantic exo-suit, looking very smug.
"Scarlet and Hooks, the legends of their species. Each are named as powerful forces, embodiments of death. I don't believe in fables. So let's see how you two can deal with a new legend... THE PREDALIEN ARMY!" cackled the mad scientist as he opened a huge door.
From that door fled hundreds of aliens. At first glance they looked just like normal aliens, only brown. But there was a very apparent difference the closer they got towards Scarlet and Hooks. There were hundreds of different types of aliens: warriors, drones, dog aliens, dragaliens, Gro'Tek aliens, and more. But they all looked like they had hybridized with both the host it would take to make them (human, dog, dragonfly-humanoid, Gro'Tek, etc.) and a predator. The last one out of the door was what pissed Scarlet off the most: a Predalien queen. Scarlet and Hooks charged into battle, slashing and tearing at their foes. Hooks was wearing xenomorph-proof armor just in case he had to face such a foe, and was glad because of it. What the doctor had done was an abomination, for predator DNA wasn't supposed to be messed with. The famous predator knew what he had to do: kill all the predaliens.
Spenalzo stood there laughing in his alien-proof exo-suit, unaware that the Predalien queen was behind him. She cackled as she broke through the glass plate that kept Spenalzo safe from outside attack. The scientist's laughter turned into screams as the queen tore him apart from inside the suit. As he was being mauled he accidentally hit the suit's self-destruct button.
There was a huge explosion that ripped through the area, killing almost all of the predaliens. The shock waves ended just a few meters away from Scarlet and Hooks, leaving them and a few predaliens alive. Hooks finished off these few, then spotted the wounded yet still alive queen in the dust. The predator rushed towards her and tore out her skull, returning to Scarlet's side. She cooed at Hooks and headed back to the elevator.
An alarm had been blaring ever since the explosion happened. The exo-suit's self destruct had been such a violent force that it ruptured one of the ship's power generators which were just underneath the final basement. The engine was about to explode in ten minutes. As the humans scrambled to their escape pods, Scarlet and Hooks reached the loading dock/shuttle parking area of the crashing ship. Hooks jumped into his ship and escaped into the blackness of space with his prizes: Spenalzo, the Predalien Queen, and the traitor's skulls. Scarlet sat in the loading dock and waited for the ship to crash. She had survived a crash before, so this one probably wouldn't stop her.
Scarlet strolled out of the burning wreckage of the crash site to find her hive returning to normal. Apparently the humans had tried to keep the entire hive captive on the planet while they waited for a larger ship to come take the dangerous cargo. Greenslash led a group of escape xenomorphs and, in a terrific and bloody battle, liberated the entire hive. Scarlet hadn't made any untransformed praetorian aliens as of late, so nobody was able to take her place as the hive's queen, so the hive had had to wait and pray for her safe return. Their prayers had been answered, for Scarlet was home. The red queen purred as the feeble minded humans who had tried to subdue her hive were being transformed into a new generation of warriors.
What a great day.
Hooks sat in his bed chamber. Ninety-nine queen skulls were finally his. It was time for another hunt: the biggest hunt known to predator kind.