ALIEN VERSUS PREDATOR UNIVERSE (Fanfiction)

sorry for double post

CHAPTER 1: THE CITY

Date: February 13th, 2230
Locale: Frontier World, Lv-642

Rocky mountains dot the dusty flats of Lv-642, the colony of Hercules Wells hug between two large mountain ranges, the atmosphere processor and power plants were built miles away from the colony. The colonists were still wearing their rebreathers as the atmosphere’s air mixture was still too toxic to breathe safely. Massive dump trucks bearing the Weyland-Yutani Corporation logo leave the colony limits as they follow the dirt road to the quarries. Massive excavating machines drug into the planet surface, unearthing rare valuable minerals. The excavating arms dump their payload into dump trucks to be taken back to the refinery. On his dailey route, 59 year old engineer Jimbo Raymas was driving back to hercules wells when he spotted a plume of dust in the distance. He reaches for his communicator, “Big Dipper five-five, we have a plume of dust in region A-Six D-twelve enroute to investigate, over” “Little dipper Five-one, you are clear to leave. Evacavator #546 has gone offline, please investigate, over.” ''Roger, that Big Dipper” he clicks off his communicator as he drives his truck down the path to the offline excavator. The local star drops behind the horizon at starset as night falls. Jimbo activates his truck's headlights as he navigates the windy roads, the truck’s lights beamed on the excavator. The massive machine had collapsed into the ground, disrupted metallic dust still hangs in the air as Jimbo leaves his dump truck. He pulls out his flashlight to further investigate the accident. The excavator left a massive hole in the ground, Jimbo flashed his light into the hole, the light revealed a massive carved humanoid face. Jimbo was initially started by this, it resembled the carved statues he saw pictures of in history class, the great sphinx of egypt but that was on Earth. “Eh Big Dipper, I think we have a serious problem… over”

The colonial development contractors arrived at the scene with their massive cranes and large trucks. The cranes attached their magnets to the excavator as it pulled the massive machine out of the cave-in. The chasm was wider and more accessible for the contractors to send a team of surveyors and prospectors into the chasm. They beamed their flashlights on the head statue, “Is this King Tut?” joked one of the surveyors, “Nah man its yo momma” snarked another. “Okay people, let's take some samples and pictures'' the team leader Edward Smith, a 58 year old xenogeologist. The room with the stone-head was roughly the size of a classroom, large lumps dotted the floor. Stacy, a 22 year old xenobiologist stumbled over one of the lumps, “Oh my god” she shined her light on lumps revealing the deceased bodies of the ruins' former inhabitants. Covered in thick biomechanical armor, the bodies were about 8ft in length, far larger than any human being.

“Oh ****,” Jimbo shines his light on the dead alien, “Is it one of them?” he whispers to Edward. Edward hunches over the dead body, he forces open the creature’s face revealing a humanoid skull underneath, “No,” Jimbo looked at his friend, reminiscing their days being colonial marines. They endured many hardships together, they saw the worse the universe threw at them. Fighting insurrectionists and rival political powers paled in comparison to the hardships they endured during the Earth War. The xenomorph, a monstrous creature discovered on a frontier world called Archeon Lv-426. They are parasitic during their early stages and become more dangerous once they reach adulthood. Although they are not insectoid per se they share a lot of insect-like traits, including eusocial behavior, parasitoidism, tough carapace, and a rigid caste system. However the xenomorph weren’t the only aliens to be discovered, within the core worlds a species of stone-age sapient lifeforms called Artcurans were discovered on Arcturus and evidence of alien visitors have been discovered on Earth. Said visitors were also encountered during the Earth War, although there were two visitor species, Edward only encountered the one. Glowing eyes shrouded in bent light, firing blue-white balls of plasma. Its horrifying growls haunt Edward to this day and if it weren't for Jimbo, he most likely would have been dead. “Let’s keep moving, okay” Jimbo said to his friend.

The surveyors quickly explored the adjacent rooms of anything valuable, most of them were simple residential lodgings or storage rooms. Then they discovered a great staircase, the way up led to an open passage within the mountains but the way down led into a massive chasm containing an underground city that stretched for miles. The surveyor team traversed down the stairs and into the ancient city of the engineers. It was a graveyard, the former denizens were nothing but bone. Fossilized carapaces of an all too familiar creature were found alongside the engineer's remains. “Xenomorphs, big ones” said Jimbo as he passed his light over one. “You mean massive,” Stacy commented, “Look at these suckers, they could rival the queen in size” “I don’t think we should have come here” Edward flashed his light on a massive mural. Jimbo, Stacy and the others flashed their lights on the mural as well. Alien hieroglyphics surround a massive xenomorph hunching over two engineers with a facehugger hatching from an egg in the center of the mural.

“Everyone back to the surface, if the company were to find out about these ruins and what they contain…” “Hey what about our paychecks and our raise? I don’t know about you but I didn’t come all the way out here to turn back now,” said 31 year old surveyor Karen McCormic. “Yeah man, I have a family to support,” said one of the prospectors. “Hey where are yall going?” Jimbo demanded as the rest of the team went off exploring the rest of the city, Karen replied to him with a middle finger. “Ahh to hell with them” Stacy cursed at the deserters. “Jimbo rally them back here, we cannot let them endanger themselves or worse the colony” Edward ordered. “Yes sir” Jimbo walks towards the surveyors and prospectors, “Hey I know yall want to get paid but the risk here is too great, I know most of yall weren’t around during the Earth War but yall don’t understand how dangerous the xenomorphs are” “Hey were not stupid, we just want a look around that’s all, maybe find something akin to an alien toaster or is that too dangerous too” said one of the prospector, James Goodman “Wait where's Karen?” he asked. “Hey where did she go?”

Karen entered one of the engineer hovels to discover a disk-shaped device laying on a stone table. She moves her fingers across its smooth face unaware of the sticky green conductive material she displaced on the device. The nanites in the green solution remotely turns on the city generator. Lights flicker on across the ancient city. The refinery roars to life as the massive gizmos inside turn on. The last structure to turn on is the comms tower which extends from the city all the way to the mountain range, a signal was then released into the planet's atmosphere into space. Karen smiles as she wipes away the green solution with her handkerchief then stuffing the handkerchief in her shirt before leaving the hovel, “Karen what have you done?” Jimbo screamed furiously, “What the Company wanted,” she retorts as she drops the disk-device. “How the hell do we turn this thing off?” Jimbo asks as he grabs the disk-shaped device. “It must have broken when I used it,” Karen smugly replied.
“Get yourself back up to the surface, you're fired” Jimbo orders her. Karen shrugs as she and the others are taken back to the surface.

The signal travelled through many star systems until it reached the nearest Engineer outpost. A tall bald marble white humanoid sitting in a biomechanical chair stares at a star map intensely. The signal shines on the star map like a beacon of light, catching the space jockey’s attention. He traces the signal to Lv-642, the original Engineer Homeworld, Mala.

CHAPTER 2: THE HUNT

Date: February 13th, 2230
Locale: Yautja Homeworld

A lone tower made of stone and copper stood out from the jungle canopy, its interior was made of copper-like metal walls. Copper lights illuminate the orange haze filled halls. The main chamber was a circular room with a panoramic window encircling the entire chamber. In the room center was a large chair and a console unit. A scaly clawed hand, taps at the console screen while adjusting the dials and knobs to hone in on the alien signal. The console’s user let out a disgruntled growl once he located the signal’s origins, the seeder’s ancestral homeworld. The hand reached over to pull one of the knobs ejecting the data trapezoid. The clawed hand pulls the data trapezoid from the rom-unit, the rest of the beast stood up from his chair. Four jointed tusked mandibles extend from its fang filled jaws, its yellow eyes are deep in its sockets, and a mane of tubular dreadlock-like tendrils flow down from its head. The rest of the creature resembled a man with two strong arms and legs. Typical of Yautja, he wore fishnets covering his chest, arms, and legs with patches of metal covering his groin, shoulders, knees, and elbows. The hall door opens up, a female walks through it. “Zerachande, clan elder Dou-dach-yeyin wishes to see you” the female informed the information master. Zerachande looked at the female, she had a voluptuous and muscular figure with curves in the right places with tight abs and typical of female yautja she was much taller than the male. Zerachande reached over at the taller female shoulder to shake it, he clicked his mandibles politely, “Thank you, Jou-teia-teka. I have something to report to the clan elder” he steps back before leaving the circular room. He walks down a flight of stoney stairs before opening the side passage door.

The steamy jungle air hits him, he flares his mandibles as he inhales the fresh air. He quickly bounds to a large tree branch before making his way to the great stone city. Zerachande stopped to see the jackal-like reptilians adorned with thick boney spikes across its back and shoulders called Hell Hounds or Predator Dogs were chasing large crab-like Zabin bugs to the river shore before devouring it. Soon a pack of dog-like creatures called Predator Hounds stumbled up on the Predator Dogs quarry, the bigger Hounds barked aggressively at the smaller spiked dogs. The dogs quickly form a line between the hounds and their kill. The leading Hound charges into the line of dogs, using brute force to break the line but the spiked predator dog’s bone spikes impaled the stupid beast. The other hounds barked viciously as they were now forced to seek other options. The sound of tree trunk snaps, the dogs and hounds charged into each other. The Hounds backed away when the dog’s bone spikes came too close to them. Soon the trunk breaker came barreling down the forest, a massive reptilian bear-like creature bellowed angrily at the dogs and hounds. It walked on its knuckles with its massive claws curved away from the ground, its back was adorned with two rows of massive triangular dorsal plates which it uses to regulate its body temperature. The smaller predatory creatures quickly retreated in the forest while the Ursator claimed the losers quarry for itself.
Zerachande continued off towards the city, massive stone walls separating the city from the jungle. Zerachande leaped from the tree branch onto one of the wall’s gargoyles. The stone wall statues were made in the likeness of honored warriors. This one was made in honor of the late Kyakin-nuu, nicknamed Deadeye; Zerachande’s mother and mentor. Zerachande slaps his hands together as he apologies for dirting her statue before continuing up the wall. He passes through the slums of the untouchables; weak and barely clothed the untouchables lay around underneath tents made of animal hide. Zerachande growls to himself, disliking the treatment these yaut’ja receive. Zerachande reaches the second wall, rather than using the entrance he scales the walls until he enters the city interior.

There the homes of the Blooded were a stark contrast to the untouchables, they were square shaped hovels made of stone. The Unbloods, Young Bloods, and Blooded alike were quick to kneel before Zerachande, for he is of Elite status. A group of warriors walk in from a neighboring ally, they quickly glance at the elite yautja, seizing him up seeing if they can take him in fair combat. Zerachande growling out a sigh, he turned towards the lesser rank yautja as he clenched his fists. He spotted there were about four of them, all of them male. Their leader was darker than the rest with bluish grey scales, his second was the lightest of them with flaming orange scales, the other two were practically twins with mottled brown scales. The twins attacked first dashing between their leader and second like dancers before leaping at Zerachande with their fists. Zerachande ducks before planting his foot into the first twin’s abdomen before upper cutting the second twin in the mandibles. The first twin flew backwards as if he was hit by a pickup truck, while his brother was thrown into the air before landing into a marketing stall. The second then charges forward, swinging his fists rapidly at Zerachande, the elite yautja dodges the lesser rank warrior’s fists. “Grrrrr Childs play!” Zerachane grabs the second by the wrist before pulling him closer, Zerachande heads butt the second with his biomask. Giving the orange one a concussion, before staring at the leader. The first twin raises himself off the floor before charging at Zerachande, the elite brings up his fist and the low class warrior runs right into it. The leader of the warriors deploys his wrist blades before charging at Zerachande. He slashing at the elite but Zerachande dodges the dual blades effortlessly. Zerachande does a backflip on to the nearest wall before leaping over the leading low class warrior, while mid-air Zerachande wrapped his hand around his fists before hitting the upstart yautja square in the nape. The leader falls to the ground as Zerachande tucks and rolls on to the ground.

“Swit-dou-ti, Fletchin-doo, Doo-wata, and Nyawande” he spoke their names, “You are more than a thousand years too early to defeat me! Now pick up what is left of your pride and get out of here” He growls at the low class warriors. The four quickly bolt off into the next ally, “Idiots” ; he shakes his head before continuing to the next district's wall. He scales the walls as he enters the Honorable district, Elites, Nobles, Veterans, and Elders dwell here. He reached the towering Tower of the Elders. Soon he found himself within a massive chamber filled with high ranking yautja representing on their clan's behalf. There in the center of the chamber stood his clan leader Dou-dach-yeyin speaking to the King of the Yautja, Ryomande Yama-shin. He was a giant among the yautja, his skin was golden tiger-striped, the knobs on the crown of his head protruded into a boney crown evoking his majesty. His armor was made of hishtanium, a red alloy stronger than even adamantium. He sat on his golden and red throne in a slouching position with his fable naginata, the kainde amedha kongetsu-sha. Dou-dach-yeyin bows before the king before slowly backing away. He turns towards Zerachande, he pulls the elite to the side. “Zerachande, I have ill news about your father Zerri’atchi. He has joined the ranks of the bad blood clans.” Zerachande eyes widen, he clenches his fists barely able to contain his ire. “Which of the bad blood clans did he join?” Zerachande clicked his mandibles. “The Black Death Clan,” Dou-dach-yeyin saw the anger in his pupil’s eyes, “Do not go looking for him. You are no match for him, he is more dangerous than a kainde amedha queen. Not even your late mother could stop him. Heed my words well and you might live long enough to reach clan elder one day.” His expression softens as he remembered another matter, “Now, I’ve heard from Jou-teia-teka that you have something to report?” Zerachande pulls out the data trapezoid, then slides it into his wrist computer. A hologram of the galaxy is projected, zoom, the planet mala is displayed which then turns red. “Mala?! The forgotten Mala’kak Homeworld breaths again?” Dou-dach-yeyin growls before turning around to walk outside, “Gather the lower ranks, we of the Laughing Skull Clan are going on a Hunt”

CHAPTER 3: THE BIRTH

Date: February 13th, 2230

Locale: Alexandria Colony

These past 30 years, Valerie has since recovered, she struggled to walk for her first couple of days but she has gotten used to her new body. She still needs to eat and drink to feed and hydrate her brain and still requires oxygen for her brain to stay functional. However she does enjoy having strength she normally wouldn’t have when she was completely human. With the help of stem cells, she doesn’t have to worry about her brain breaking down from old age as long as she has her routine stem cell treatment from her personal physician. Her synthetic nature has been kept secret from the public, in general people are indifferent to androids but many hold a secret distrust towards the machines and their attempt to blend in with humans. Just the other day Valerie saw an old bishop model being harassed in the street. Her bedroom door opens as her doctor walks into her room. Dr. Monica Vollmer enters carrying a white briefcase with a red cross slapped across it. “Hello, Valerie. It’s time for your treatment” Monica smiled. Valerie nodded to the pretty doctor with short brown hair combed back, she was about in her late 30’s but she looked like she was 10 years younger. She opened the briefcase and slowly removed the syringes, Valerie combed up the hair covering her nap with her hand as Dr. Vollmer sticks the syringe into the base of Valerie’s skull. The green fluid is propelled out of the needle into Valerie’s cerebrospinal fluid, she could feel a euphoric rush washing over her brain.

Locale: Unknown

An ovomorph lies within the container. It could sense vibrations permeating its surroundings, the ovomorph senses it’s trapped in a small container, instinctually it resists opening its apex. The vibrations grow more rapid and violent as time went until the ovomorph felt its container undergoing free fall. “THUD!” the container lid pops off, releasing the sealed content to sense the fresh air. The Ovomorph peels its apex, opening the four lips into a petal-like formation. The Ovomorph breathes its last breath as it stops supplying it's facehugger nutriences. “Krrrrrrrrrr” The facehugger takes its first breath, slowly moving its finger-like limbs across the metallic floor. Without eyes it couldn’t see its surroundings, instead it searched for vibrations. It sensed something nearby, gradually the facehugger gained enough strength to climb the stairs into the ****pit. It crawled up a long surface before its senses detected it was near someone’s mouth. It quickly climbed onto the pilot's face, inserting itself deep into the pilot’s mouth. The Pilot struggled as she reached for the facehugger, the parasite tightening its tail around her neck causing her to blackout. The facehugger slid the rest of its ovipositor down the pilot’s throat, both supplying her oxygen and releasing its progeny into her chest cavity. Hours went by as the embryo left the facehugger’s tube. The facehugger, having sense the embryo had left its body, slowly retracted itself from the pilot’s oral cavity. Slime leaks around the pilot’s mouth as the facehugger pulls itself off of her. Its limbs give out on it as it falls from the pilot’s face down hard onto the floor, snuffing out any remaining life it had left. The ship was left adrift in the deep void of space.

Hours went by before the pilot woke up from her nap but felt something was wrong, there was heavy load in her chest. She spots the dead facehugger on the floor, she calmly reprograms the flight route from Alexandria colony to a remote planet in the Dis system. The cargo dropship lands on the jungle world of Arhtom. Massive butterfly and moth-like creatures take to the skies as the ship lands safely in a patch of grass. The dropship bay doors open as a loud crunching noise resonates from within. “Uhhhh” the pilot wheezes as her chest explodes into a shower of blood, spilling all over her ship’s dashboard. “GrAhhhhhhhhhhhh” screams the chestburster as it takes its first breath. The eyeless serpentine creature turned its gaze to its host, its hosts died with a satisfied look of defiance on her face. The chestburster pulls itself free from her rib cage with its tiny underdeveloped arms. The neonate xenomorph nods its head in respect to its host before slithering out of the ship. Tiny pig-squirrel creatures scurry in the grass for nuts, drawing the chestbursters' attention towards them. The chestburster awkwardly slithers into the grass like a cripple person. The pig-squirrels were too busy searching for food to notice the danger. The chestburster striked like a snake at the nearest pig-squirrel, its razor sharp metallic teeth burrowed into its prey. The pig-squirrel struggled to escape but the chestburster quickly constricted the furry critter like a python. The pig-squirrel struggled less and less as the chestburster tightened its hold on it. Once the critter stopped moving, the chestburster opened its jaws wide to swallow the pig-squirrel whole. Night fell upon the jungle world, the chestburster quickly retreated back into the ship, it sensed danger was nearby. A pack of rabbit-dogs sniff the area in search of prey. The rabbit-dogs resembled the earth’s wolves except for their large rabbit-like ears, fluffy ball tails, and a pair of catfish antennae that extend down from their snouts. The rabbit-dogs bark at each other for dominance before catching the chestburster’s scent leading back to the ship. The dogs climb aboard the cargo dropship, they sniff the rotting remains of the ovomorph before heading off into the ****pit. The dogs nibble on the dead facehugger, one over zealous rabbit-dog bites into the facehugger; the acid within bursts into its mouth melting the rabbit-dogs face off. Its lower jaw unhinges from the rest of its face before collapsing onto the floor.

The rabbit-dogs quickly back away from the facehugger and their dying sibling. The dogs sniff the dead pilot, they lick her fingers to see if she was edible. The alpha dog begins to nibble on her fingers, droplets of fluids landed on its head. The alpha dog licked up the droplets before resuming nibbling on the pilot. It paw stomps on the discarded skin of a chestburster. Above the rabbit-dogs a long segmented serpentine tail swishes above them. The alpha dog opens its jaws wide to take a bite out of the pilot and is met by a swift impalement through the back of its skull. A sharp stinger barb now sticks out of the alpha dog’s mouth. Its head jerks around before the tail pulls itself free from the alpha’s skull. The other rabbit-dogs look up at the ceiling, they see a dark creature biomechanical in nature stare down at them with its seemingly eyeless face. The creature peels back its thin lips bearing its metallic teeth at the dogs. The fully developed xenomorph cutted off the dogs only means for escape, with the swipe of its claws it made short work of them. The ones that survived it quickly spun them in cocoons of secreted resin, what was once a pack of ten were now only six. Three dogs were simply trapped in the resin while the other three were undergoing a painful metamorphosis into ovomorphs. The xenomorph turned her attention to her former host before turning back to the dogs. 

Hours had passed since the rabbit-dog-ovomorph yelp its last yelp as its organs and bones reconfigure into the building materials for the new facehuggers. The ovomorphs began to open their apexes as the facehuggers slowly climbed out from the ovomorph interior. The facehuggers leap onto the faces of the cocooned rabbit-dogs, silencing their whines and yelps. The following day, the mid-day star Dis shines down on the jungle planet. The xenomorph was snuggling near its former host almost as if protecting her from harm. She wakes to the sounds of ribs cracking and blood spilling, she rises to her feet as she approaches the cocoons. Three tiny four legged chestbursters emerge from the dog's stomach region. They extend their inner jaws to greet their mother, she gestures her head towards the open bay doors, she leads them into the jungle to gather resources to build themselves a new hive.

Valerie awakened from her sleep screaming, briefly hallucinating a chestburster crawling out of her then slithering on her bed. Valerie slaps herself across the face. Ending the hallucination, Valerie quickly gets out of her bed as she sits at her computer. She types away at her PC, discovering some job listings requiring her skills in piloting. She grabs her pilot helmet as she makes a trip to the local starport.

NO! Don’t go to the pilot place it’s a dumb idea!

CHAPTER 4: THE SEEDING

Date: February 14th, 2230
Locale: Frontier World, Lv-642

A horseshoe shaped starship warps above the frontier world Lv-642. The U shaped ship slides beneath the clouds as it hovers high above the second settlement Thanatos Base. The colonists leave the confines of their vehicles and shelter as they point and stare at the jockey ship. The underneath of the ship opens exposing the interior to the planet's atmosphere. A lone pale marble skin man-looking alien stares down at the settlement, he gives the signal to the others. Rows and rows of black canisters begin to fly from their holsters down the hatch below. Once the payload of canisters reach a certain altitude the canisters explode into a black cloud before raining its dark rain on the settlement. Those who were caught outside immediately suc***b to its effects. Some were reduced to base organic compounds, most were either petrified or had something erupt out of them, while a few were able to retreat indoors. Tiny white-transulecent creatures quickly overrun the base defenses, violently ripping apart security and civilian personnel alike. The creatures rapidly grew from the size of a kitten to the size of a large dog within minutes of their birth, when at full maturity they reached human size. Those that were unlucky to survive the black rain quickly began to exhibit high levels of aggression as their bodies were rapidly metamorphosing into something else. Receding gums, bulbous forehead, and high aggression these aberrations initially attacked the remaining garrisons like madmen or zombies. Though they were easier to repel then the neomorphs, the surviving aberrations began to grow longer limbs and bald elongated heads while growing stronger in the process. These newly matured aberrations resumed their attack on the remaining garrisons, fighting less and less like humans but more like xenomorphs.

Walking among the aberrations and neomorphs came a being dressed in black biomechanical armor. He pulls out a flute, he presses the flute into his helmet “trunk”, he blows in a few harmonic notes. Any neomorph or aberration in the vicinity would immediately cease from their previous actions. The black armoured warrior then blows in a soothing melody, the neomorphs and aberrations rally near the black armoured being in complete submission. The black armoured being walked amongst his creations showing no fear to them. They follow their master to the base command center, the black armoured being plants a device on the base’s servers. The device quickly downloads the entire colony’s database to its hardbanks. The engineer smiled beneath his helmet before blowing in an intense note to his creations. The neomorphs and aberrations quickly departed from their master’s sight as they now were given a simple order: Search and destroy all remaining life. The black armoured engineer began his trek back to his ship.

A Yautja clan ship warps above Planet Mala "Lv-642". The youngbloods fought each other over the “best” awu’asa (Armor), with the strongest laying claim over the best gear. Clan Leader Dou-dach-yeyin watches over the youngbloods arm themselves with wrist blades, plasma castors, burners, and combi-sticks. He spots his son among them, the elder yautja felt pride seeing his son arm himself with the best of such meager gear. Dou-dach-yeyin then returned to the navigation room, where Zerachande was staring at the holographic globe of Mala. The ship's sensors immediately pick up on the juggernaut, “Mala’kak,” Dou-dach-yeyin growls at the hologram projector. Zerachande exchanges glances with the elder, “Cloak” the clan leader clicking his mandibles. Zerachande taps at the ship’s controls while pulling down a lever. The clan ship is soon enshrouded by a light bending energy field.
Among the youngbloods were Swayande, Sarachande, Rouyeyin, and Tassa-dhou-di. These four young yautja were the cream of the crop among these youngsters. Swayande with his dexterity made him the most agile hunter of the group, Sarachande’s high intellect made him the most resourceful of the current litter, Rouyeyin was the strongest of the litter, and Tassa-dhou-di was the ballsiest of the litter. The youngbloods all race towards the clan dropship alongside their superiors as they board the craft. Zerachande was leading this hunting party in the clan leader’s stead. Zerachande gave the signal to the pilots to release the shuttle from the mother clanship. The smaller craft is jettison from the mothership before setting course for the planet below.

The yautja shuttle lands on the outskirts of Hercule Wells. The shuttle bay doors open as Zerachande takes point. The youngbloods and higher ranked warriors climb out of the shuttle as they monitor the surrounding area. Zerachande orders the ranked warriors to secure a perimeter as he begins the roll call. One of the perimeter warriors spots an unusually heat signature in his biomask, it resembled an ooman (human) but walked like a kainde amedha (Hard Meat/Xenomorph). “Zerachande. A lone Ooman spotted on the flat plains” Zerachande clicked his mandibles, “Is it armed?” Zerachande asked. “No, Ooman is not armed. This ooman walks with strange strides” Zerachande approaches the perimeter warrior, he too scans the plain flats before spotting the strange ooman. “Its heat flickers like a dying flame but yet its strides speak of no injury” Zerachande switches from his blue grade heat vision to the red grade bioelectrical vision. The ooman’s bioelectrical activity permeates its entire body rather than being isolated in the brain, spine, and scattered across a network of nerves. He switches to his metallic vision, the ooman is developing an exoskeleton underneath its skin. “Kill it” Zerachande commanded, “That is no ooman, it's an abomination” The warrior nodded before cloaking, he bolted down the hill onto the dusty flats. The ooman ceased movement as it raised its head to sniff the stale air, it turned its body to where the scent was the strongest. The Cloaked warrior deployed his wrist blades with confidence, the aberration peeled back its chapped lips baring its metallic teeth. The warrior lunged his wristblade at the ooman’s midsection but the aberration quickly dropped to all fours like a monkey, but quickly dashed away like a spider. The warrior snarls as he is thrown in the air by the mutant ooman, the warrior pulls out his combi-stick but the aberration closes the distance very quickly. The aberration widens its jaws as it fires out its fat tongue at the warrior’s biomask like a frog. The force of its tongue pinned the warrior to the floor.

The other warriors and unbloods watched the skirmish from a distance. The few female hunters in the hunting party wish to intervene but Zerachande shoots them with a glare. “Honorable Zerachande, shouldn’t we help him? The ooman will kill him at this rate” the young female growled. “No. It is dishonorable to interfere with a warrior’s battle. You may have saved his life but you would damage his pride as a warrior. Should he die at the hands of this abomination, then he shall do it honorably” Zerachande clicked his mandibles. The mutant ooman jerked his tongue pulling the biomask from the warrior’s face. The warrior’s lungs burned as he inhaled the toxic air. The warrior roared definitely at the abomination, the mutant ooman roared back before crushing the warrior’s head with its fists. The warrior’s body twitches as it slowly dies. The aberration then turned its gaze towards the rest of the yautja. Zerachande then bolted down the slope, the mutant ooman stared at the elite yautja with its dead milky eyes. It chatter its teeth as Zerachande calmly approached the thing. Zerachande drew his glaive, the aberration lanced its sticky tongue, Zerachande severed the mutant’s tongue with a stroke of his glaive. Acid blood spewed from the mutant’s mouth, the aberration skittered across the dusty flats like a fleeing lizard. Zerachande sheathed his glaive as he reached over for his smart disk, flared the finger slots to activate the disk. The biomask registering the smart disk’s activation began calculating distance and wind speed. A red bar dances across zerchande’s vision before forming into a triangle around the mutant ooman. Zerachande roared as he threw the smart disk at the fleeing aberration. The disk flies across the air spinning its razor sharp blade. The aberration screamed as the disk sliced into the pelvis, down its spine, then out of its elongated head; bifurcating it. The two halves separate from each other shortly after the mutant ooman realized it was already dead. The smart disk flies back around as it returns to its master’s hand. Zerachande catches the disk by the finger ports before returning it to its holster.

The other hunters roar in excitement as they dash down the hill to meet up with their superior. Zerachande pointed at the body of their fallen comrade. “Take him back to the ship, then we hunt” Zerachande growled. The females carry a stretcher to place the fallen warrior on, they nod to their superior before bringing the fallen back to the shuttle. In the distance not too far away from the yautja hunting party, was a small pack of fully grown neomorphs. The pack leader sniffs the air, catching the scent of blood in the breeze. It clicks its teeth to its subordinates to follow. The neomorphs charge across the salt colored flats, almost blending in with it. Sarachande heard a noise coming from the south. The yautja turned their gaze towards a pack of heat signatures that were shaped like kainde amedha but radiated heat like a poyade amedha (soft meat). The neomorphs stared at the yautja with cautious curiosity, the leader clicked his teeth, the neomorphs protruded their goblin-shark jaws as they lunged at the alien hunters. Rouyeyin stabs the first neomorph with his wrist blades in its gut, making a sawing motion before pulling the creature's guts out of its body. Tassa-dhou-di stabs the ground with his combi-stick before swinging around it to kick a neomorph in the sides, sending it flying across the flats in a broken state. The neomorph pack dispersed after suffering some casultities. Swayande bolted after a fleeing neomorph before stabbing it in the head with his wrist blades. Sarachande spotted the fleeing pack leader, he readied his combi-stick but realized it was too far away so he pulled out his burner. A crack shot, Sarachande caused the pack leader to explode.

Unbeknownst to the yautja, they were being monitored by the mala’kak, the dark engineer smiled as he caressed the head of a deacon. The pointy head creature cooed as it was caressed. The pale skinned engineer then looked over at another holographic image of the colony of Hercules Wells, the aberrations and neomorphs were slowly encroaching on their defenses. Then he glares at the underground city’s hologram, with a wave of his hand the city’s egg silos become active. Blue mist covered the dormant ovomorphs, the engineer tapped at the mist producing functions. A new signal is given to the eggsilos. The blue mist turns red, the eggs glow as they flickered to life. The apex of the ovomorph peel opens like a flower blossoming. The facehuggers escape from their ovomorph prisons as they wait for the harvester. A tall brown biomechanoid with massive long knuckle dragging arms plopped down near the hatched eggs, its head resembled that of an engineer’s mask and had a long segmented tail in place of legs. The facehuggers latch themselves on to the harvesters as the massive creatures begin to climb up to the egg silo’s ceiling. Once outside they climb down from the slopes of the silos into the ancient city ruins, searching for suitable hosts for the facehuggers.

I liked this chapter...

Especially the parts with the Yaut Ja. 

CHAPTER 5: THE SYNTHETIC

Date: February 14th, 2230
Locale: Alexandria Colony

Valerie makes it to the Alexandria City Starport. She spotted several spacecraft docked there. An antique UD-4L Cheyenne Dropship was parked outside the pilot registrations office. Once she arrived she made her way into the registration office. A bitter short old man stamping the lease papers of an ongoing line of wannabe pilots, “It appears to you have -2 points on your license” The old man reads from his monitor. “It was a fender bender, man” said the wanna be pilot, “Lease denied!” *stamp* “Next!” the old man shouts as the line grows smaller. After the thunderous roars of stamping and hearing the old man alternate between “Lease approved” and “Lease denied” It was finally Valerie’s turn. Valerie nervously approached the old man’s desk, her synthetic hands were shaking as she handed the registration officer her papers. “E’llo there little lady, nervous are we? Well don’t be, there is always next year if you can’t get a lease approval” he looks at her papers before turning towards his keyboard, he quickly typed something into his computer as he stares at the monitor. “Consider it your lucky day, lass” *stamp* “Lease approved! Now head down that corridor, so they can take yer picture, okay lass?” he gave her a crooked smile, “NEXT!” He suddenly shouted, a startled Valerie metaphorically jumped out of her skin. She followed the old man’s direction to the next room, she stood in front a green background “Cheese!” said the man behind the camera droid. Valerie smiled nervously, the camera bot’s led lights flickered a green indicating the picture was taken. Valerie’s pilot licence was quickly printed out of the machine, “Here’s your licence and lease. Feel free to pick out the designated starcraft of your choosing and have a nice day”

Valerie walked outside as she eyed her licence, and a beaten up PCS-X00 Proteus Superiority Fighter caught her eye. A fuselage resembling a fighter jet with a cage ****pit. A twin cannon hung underneath the nose of the ship. Jutting from the fuselage was a pair of fat engines and a pair of wings with twin foldout booster engines. She walked over to the mechanics, “Hey how much is the Proteus” Valerie asked the ship mechanics. “Ms. Armstrong, aren’t you still recovering? also does Mark know you're out here?” “No, I feel much better. Also my father can’t keep me cooped up in that house all year can he?” Valerie explained. “Eh, you're right. Can’t fault the man wanting his daughter safe. It's about $450,000” The mechanic states. “450,000!” Valerie was shocked at the expensive price. “Hey, that's the discount price for it being used. But since your ordeal with those things, maybe I can drop the price down to 250,000, final offer” the mechanic shrugged. Valerie sighs before pulling her Armstrong Corp credit card from her purse. “Oh and one more thing? Did you graduate from flight school?” The mechanic asked before reading the sad expression on Valerie’s face, “Ummm nevermind, just had me your licenses so I can activate the lease” Valerie exchanged her card and license, the mechanic began transferring all the necessary diagnostics to Valerie Armstrong’s account. “Okay, this baby is yours. Try and not bang it up too much, that was a joke” The mechanic quickly reacted to Valerie's eyebrow furrowing.
Valerie opens the ****pit as she climbs in, the seats were comfy she made a mental note as she bounces her bump on the seat. She slithers her hands over the controls, she flips some switches and turns some knobs. The engines roared to life, the onboard AI began to hover the spacecraft out of the starport. She then began to pull back on the flight controls. The ship’s twin booster engines unhold into a set of four before accelerating offworld. The blue skies were quickly replaced with the black void of space.

Meanwhile… On Arthom. The xenomorph has built a small nest around the dropship, the runners came back to periodically check on their mother. Their mother has since molted from her drone stage into the more hardened warrior caste. She replaced her smooth dome with an armoured ribbed design. Some of her fingers had since merged together, reducing her six digits down to four. The rest of her carapace grew bulkier as she became more suited for combat. She hisses to her children as she abandons her molted exoskeleton onboard the ship. The Warrioress spotted her children had a present for her, a green-skinned vaguely simian man-thing lying unconscious at the clawed hands of her children. The runners offer the alien to their mother. The Warrioress grabs the man-thing by the leg and drags him into the ship. The man-thing slowly awakens covered in hardened resin, “Goo-gambye-ya! Ich not talos!” the alien man-thing spoke as he struggled to free himself from the resin. The Warrioress hissed at the struggling man-thing, “HA-jooku wana harambay!” the man-thing screamed as he struggled within his resin restraints. The Warrioress having enough of the annoying creature thrashes her tail at him, her stinger impeded into his shoulder. “Jooku jooku wana haram-bay” the man-thing slowly passes out from her paralysis venom. Hours had passed as the man-thing slowly recovered. He looks around the ship to see another one of his kind cocooned in a similar fashion. The other man-thing tried to scream but the Warrioress silenced him as she slid her inner jaws into his oral cavity, before vomiting up a mutagen down his esophagus. The Warrioress turns her gaze back to the first man-thing before retreating back into the dark recesses of the dropship. The other man-thing tried to scream but all it could do was make a honking sound. The first man-thing watched in horror as the mutagen reconstructed the other man-thing’s body. His arms fused to the rest of his body, then his legs fused to his stomach before inflating like a balloon. Now his body began resembling an ovomorph, the last thing left of his original body was his head. The other man-thing hissed as his head sank into his new ovomorph form, a dim light glowed as the head was recycled into the building material for the facehugger. The first man-thing screamed “Ahhhh-Jooku wana haram-bay!” The neonate facehugger signals the ovomorph to peel open its flower petal lips. The facehugger weakly crawls out of its ovomorph, instincts drive it to leap from its former body onto the man-thing’s face. Wet and cold, suffocation and darkness; the man-thing felt. The Warrioress again leaves the safety of her nest to collect more hosts. A day went by and the Warrioress managed to increase her nest size with the aid of her newly hatched drones and runners. The Warrioress felt a change happening inside her body, so she retreated back into her fledging nest which now covers the entire dropship and parts of the surrounding jungle and plains. Her ribbed elongated head began to split open, as it was replaced with a fatter ridged dominated head; at the apex of her cranium formed the basis of her eventual crown. She grew 1/4th her original size, her stinger fell off as it was replaced with a bladed spade. The Warrioress was entering the first stage of Preatorian-hood.

cool, Imma see If I have esp, as to what happens next to valarie

CHAPTER 6: THE AWAKENING

Date: February 14th, 2230
Locale: Frontier World, Lv-642

Zerachande took half of his warriors northward from their ship. Great digging machines were left scattered around the mountain slopes. “What are these... machines?” asked Tassa-dhou-ti. “Diggers, the oomans use them to draw metals from the ground” Zerachande answered his subordinate. The yautja carefully observed the excavators and bulldozers, Red ooman blood stained the glass of several of the machine’s ****pits. Zerachande switches between his vision modes, he spots fresh tire tracks leading away from the site and alongside them were kainde amedha tracks following shortly after as well as around the machines. A youngblood stands near the precipice of the collapsed entrance into the mala’kak city. A low gutteral noise emanates from the chasm, followed by heavy movement. A harvester then emerges from the chasm, tan exoskeleton with large knuckle dragging arms plop down on the dirty surface. The head resembles an overtly round engineer’s helmet with a thinner breathing chord as it pulls the rest of itself out of the hole, its lower half being a long segmented tail. The yautja quickly entered a defensive formation aiming their combi-sticks at the Mala’kak Construct. The Harvester raised one of its arms up, the yautja immediately began firing their plasma castors into the tan colored machine. The arm swipes across its own back grabbing a handful of five facehuggers before tossing them at the yautja. Three of the facehuggers are impaled by their spears while two manage to skitter away. Zerachande flips his naginata downwards to impale one of the fleeing facehuggers. The Harvester slips back into the chasm, its hulking form crashing into the mala’kak face statue before rolling on top of the dead mala’kak bodies. The Harvester slowly crawls back on to its knuckles before turning its head back towards the yautja hunting party. The Harvester makes a loud elephantine gruttal noise. More heavy movements emanate from within the chasm. The Harvesters emerge from the chasm like angry gatekeepers of hell. “Retreat” he clicked his mandibles, he briefly rescans the tracks, “Follow me!” he points off to the direction of the tracks. “Don’t lead it back to the ship” Zerachande growls.

The harvesters plop down their knuckles into the dusty flats, they slowly follow the fleeing yautja. The remaining Neomorphs from the first pack Zerachande encountered bolt towards them. Swayande slices open the neomorphs with his glaive like a hot knife through butter. Sarachande continued monitoring the Harvesters, a thought came to him, why weren’t the harvesters directly attacking them? An ooman settlement creeped up on the horizon. Smoke rose from the settlement meaning they had already reached there. Rouyeyin growing tired of running stops dead in his tracks, he turns towards the lead Harvester. He extends both of his wristblades from his gauntlets. The Harvester throws a punch at the yautja, Rouyeyin dodges the yellow biomechanical construct’s fist. Rouyeyin jumps on the Harvest’s fist then runs up its arm, the Harvester slowly turns its head towards the yautja youngblood. Rouyeyin impaled the lead harvester’s head, yellow conductive fluid oozed from its damaged skull. Rouyeyin pulls his wrist blades out, flicking the conductive fluid off his blades. Rouyeyin leaps from the harvester’s back back on to the dusty flats, the Harvesters suddenly halt, Rouyeyin walks confidently back to his peers.

His peers raised their fists in the air in excitement, impressed by Rouyeyin's prowess. Their excitement dies very quickly as the damaged lead harvester punches Rouyeyin in the back, sending him in the air towards his peers. The Harvester body twitches, yellow conductive fluid shoots out of its head as it approaches Rouyeyin. Sarachande and Swayande bolt towards the lead harvester to save Rouyeyin, the other harvesters slither on the ground hurling their fists at the youngbloods. Zerachande unsheathes his naginata from its travel form as he bolts towards the hulking harvesters. He slides on his knees as he swings his spear’s blade against the lead harvester’s wrists, yellow conductive fluid spews out from its open wound. Zerachande targets the harvester’s head while positioning his feet, the honorable warrior raises his naginata with one arm. The lead harvester slams its injured hand down into the ground as it throws its non-injured hand towards the elite. Zerachande hurls his spear forward, the naginata flies across the air right into the lead harvester’s eye socket. Zerachande bolts up to the lead harvester before leaping up to grab the naginata’s handle, throwing all his weight to bring the construct down. The spear’s blade digs further into the construct’s head, Zerachande quickly pulls his naginata out as the other harvesters throw their clumsy fists at him. The elite yautja barely manages to slip past their fists as he dances across the flats to save his clanmates.
Sarachande and Swayande helped Rouyeyin up as their superior drew the harvester’s ire away from the youngbloods. The second lead Harvester slams his fist into Zerachande's spine, sending the honorable yautja across the flats like a ragdoll. Sarachande left the hard work up to Swayande as he charged up to the second leading harvester. He leaps onto the second lead harvester but is quickly snatched and held in its tight grip. The second lead Harvester then turns away from the yautja as it bolts directly towards the ooman settlement of Hercule Wells, with Sarachande in hand. The four harvesters were immediately showered by projectile fire from the ooman’s weapons.

The citizens of Hercule Wells have since garrisoned the outlying buildings into makeshift fortification units since the neomorphs and aberrations migration from the Thanatos Base. The recent arrival of the excavation teams was a bad omen. Edward Smith and his fellow former marine Jimbo were called from their quarters up to the administration office tower located in the center of the colony. “What happened to the rest of your team?” said the Colonial Administration Representative Brent Schumacher. Edward turned towards the Rep, “We’ve lost a lot of good people down in the ruins”
“You mean abandon them?” The Rep corrected. “Representative, have you ever encountered a xeno before? There was simply not enough time to save them, we had to leave to save ourselves, to save this colony!” Edward explained. “Save it from what exactly, Mr. Smith?” Schumacher asked, annoyed. “From them,” Edward points out the window at the approaching Harvesters. The harvesters were being showered by gunfire as they approached the colony perimeter. The Harvesters climb over the house-sized garrisoned prefab buildings as they make their way to the colony’s center. The Harvesters punched one of the guards, causing him to explode in a shower of blood and meat. The second lead harvester hurls Sarachande into a diner, he collides into the diner’s glass window, violently crashing into the counters, tables and chairs. The momentum dislodge his biomask from his face. The second lead Harvester then rejoins the rest of the Harvesters as they continue their way into the colonial plaza. The four harvesters began unearthing the plaza with their massive hands. The four harvesters then stop their digging as they uncover the dirt and rock covering the shimmering biomechanical layer beneath the colony. The Harvesters pull on long rib-like rod levers. The atmosphere began to emit an electrical charge as the Harvesters began turning the levers. A rumble was felt throughout Hercule Wells as the planet shook. Dirt and dust began to lift from the surface of Mala into space. The dusty flats were quickly replaced with fields of biomechanoid structures dotting the landscape.

“Mr. Smith and Mr. Raymas, begin evacuating the colonists” Schumacher plops down in his leather seat. “Yes sir” Edward complied as he and Jimbo left the representative’s office. “Attention the people of Hercule Wells, please evacuate to the nearest starport. This is an Emergency! Please evacuate to the nearest starport” the civilians were led by the remaining guards to the starport. The ground in the plaza began opening and several colony buildings collapsed into the shifting biomechanical landscape. A massive biomechanical tower shots out of the plaza center emitting electrical arcs on its ascent. Strange grey featureless biomechanical humanoid constructs were awakened from their slumber as they began working on the biomechanical gizmos that dot the tower. The colonists fled on their starships into space, the remaining guards stayed behind to ensure every colonist made it to the ships. “Okay that's the last of them,” said Officer John Ikari. A woman was heard screaming not far from the starport, “****” the guards bolt around the corner and discovered the screams were coming from the diner. The stranded colonists stare at the wounded yautja warrior. Among them was a medical doctor, “Hey can someone help me to get this thing up?” barked MD and Weyland-Yutani Representative Rebecca Serizawa “You crazy lady, you don’t know what that thing is?” retorted one of the guards. “No, I don’t but the company would” Rebecca reminded. “We don’t have time for this, we need to get everyone off this planet, pronto” the Officer Ikari found himself shouting at the doctor. “Are you arguing with a corporate sponsor? Remember who pays for your salary. Now go get me that stretcher” she demanded. The guards leave the diner as they back track to the hospital, they search the lone corridors before discovering a mobile cryogenic pod, usually used for transporting patients with critical injuries but it should do the trick. “I hope this is what she wanted,” said Officer Ikari as he motions his fellow officers to move the cyropod back to the diner. “Sir, we got movement” said one of the officers staring at his motion tracker. “Colonists?” Officer Ikari asked. “No, sir,” the guard responded. “Quick get this pod back to the Diner” Officer Ikari ordered. A lone facehugger skitters across the whte marble floors, avoiding visual detection from its prey. The Guards huddled around the cryogenic pod, ever vigilant of threats. The facehugger follows shortly behind them. The ground shook for a moment, the colony's lights flickered off for a moment before powering back on. Then the guards pushed the mobile cryogenic pod into the diner’s powered doors, “Okay people, grab this thing and put it in the pod” Dr. Serizawa demanded. The remaining colonists and guards struggle to place the unconscious alien inside the cryopod. The power flickers off again, the facehugger desperate in searching for a host quickly latches itself to Sarachande. The cryopod seals closed supplying its user with pure oxygen. The colonists raced to push the mobile cryogenic pod to the last spacecraft. The last starship launches from the Hercule Wells starport.

The yautja hunters quickly retreated from the flats as the dirt ground gave way to the biomechanical one below. Swayande glances at the darkened sky, the oomans starships like shooting stars shoot across the dark skies. The Zerachande and Rouyeyine were taken onboard the ship with the rest of the hunters. The pilots quickly initiate the engines to burn, the ship quickly takes to the dark skies as the last remains of the dirt ground is stripped from the planet’s surface. The colony of Hercule Wells is upheaved by the shifting of the landscape. Harvesters arose from the surface alongside the featureless humanoid constructs, the remaining aberrations are taken to an uplifting facility to become the featureless humanoids. The dark armoured engineer smiles at the holographic starmap as the humans and yautja ships flee from his homeworld.

CHAPTER 7: THE GHOST IN THE SHELL

Probes bearing the Weyland-Yutani logo enter Arthom’s orbit. The probes began taking pictures of the surface. The data is transferred back to the Weyland-Yutant data center. The images are then studied by a team of synthetic analysts, an image caught their eye, a growing dark spot in the middle of a meadow surrounded by trees. The probes are redirected to the dark spot, the probes took close up photos of the dark spot. The images of a fledgling xenomorph hive was alarming especially on a garden world like Arthom and so close to the Alexandrian system.

Nine months later…

Date: November 31st, 2230

Locale: Somewhere in Space

A PCS-X00 Proteus codename Videl flies alongside an M-Class Star Freighter, escorting it to the planet Styx. Valerie was listening to some old 1980’s music from her spaceship’s radio. She bobs her head to the tune as she carefully navigates the freighter through an asteroid field.

“It's early morning, the sun comes out

Last night was shaking and pretty loud

My cat is purring, it scratches my skin

So what is wrong with another sin?

The ***** is hungry, she needs to tell

So give her inches and feed her well

More days to come, new places to go

I've got to leave, it's time for a show

Here I am

Rock you like a hurricane

Here I am

Rock you like a hurricane”

The Videl reaches its destination, a derelict but fully functional mining facility waiting for an M-class Freighter to dock with it. The Freighter moves ahead of the Proteus as it begins to dock with the derelict miner. “Shadow to Snark, you locked, nice and tight out there” Valerie turned down her music as she spoke through the telecom unit. “Snark to Shadow, mining facility secured. Thanks for the help” they replied. “Roger that” Valerie replied back. The Videl broke away from the departing freighter as she returned to the Shonen station orbiting the ringed yellow gas giant Tsunade. The Videl decelerates as her starcraft enters the stardock, a team of maintenance personnel march up to her spacecraft to begin refueling.  Valerie makes her way through the octagonal corridors, she spots a large font of LEVEL 4 on the wall before making her way to the diner. She spots in the diner several working class pilots just unwinding from a long day of space hauling and what-not. “Hey, did ya hear ‘bout what happen to dem colonies out on the frontier?” said a large man with a deep southern accent. “Yeah, wait, which of dem frontier worlds are ya talkin ‘bout Tyrone?” his friend was a frail looking guy from what Valerie could see of him behind Tyrone. “Heh, I mean all of dem? First with Ryushi about six years ago, then Rim, Bouvetoya, Lv-642 about nine months back and now Lv-1201,” Tyrone turned to his friend while sipping his coffee. “What do ya think happen to them?” Jebidiah asked. “I don’t know but I do know something fishy is goin’ on and I’m gonna find out” Tyrone then glances over at Valerie as she orders herself a glass of milk. Tyrone takes another sip of his coffee before getting up. “Hey, whataya doin? Tyrone?” Jebidiah whispers-shouts to get his friend’s attention. Tyrone ignores his skinny friend as he sits next to Valerie. He sizes up her delicate form and cutesy facial features almost too perfect to be human. “Well hello there little girl, what is a cute thing like you doin’ all the way out here on the frontier?” The big guy grins as he sips his coffee. Valerie sighs, she turns to smile at the large man, he was a muscle bound burly fellow with a dirt blonde mullet and massive oversized chin. “I’m just here to do my job” Valerie stated coldly to Tyrone. “Awww don’t be like dat, darling. I’m just trying to engage in casual conversation” The cashier then turned up the television as Solar News Channel came on. “This is Solar News, the most trusted news network in known space. Tragedy struck the frontier colony Ryushi, a freak accident involving the cargo ship Lector suddenly self-destructed over the colony killing almost all of its inhabitants. In other news, a memorial has been fully constructed on Lv-426 to commemorate the colonists and marines that gave their lives in 2179’s destruction of Hadley's Hope” Valerie, seeing the two men were distracted, managed to slip past them as she headed back towards her starship. 

She climbs aboard the Videl, she plops herself into its leather seat before punching in her next set of coordinates into the computer. The autopilot kicked as it took care of all the minimal stuff. Valerie revs up her engines as she accelerates from the docking bay of the shonen station before entering subspace. Tyrone and Jebidiah stare out from the porthole as they see her ship speeding away. “Looks like she gave us the o’l slip up, Tyrone” he sips his coffee. “Aww shut your damn mouth Jeb” Tyrone takes one last sip of his coffee before crushing the styrofoam cup into his head before tossing it into the garbage can. 

Valerie punched in the coordinates to Earth. The FTL drives roared as her ship slipped into hyperspace. Valerie’s brain aches from fatigue after a long day's work, drop out of hyperspace, a voice whispers in her mind. Valerie is too tired to question the voice, and begins to order her starcraft to drop out of hyperspace. Her starcraft now hovers above the planet Arthom. Go to sleep, again the voice whispers in her mind. Valerie powered down her spacecraft’s engines, she closed her eyes before drifting off to sleep. As she sleeps, the nightmares come back. She relives the nightmares of being cocooned, an ovomorph lying in front of her just waiting to hatch. The touch of the facehugger’s finger-like legs gripping on to her head as it shoved its probicious down her mouth. The sharp pain from a chestburster chewing through her ribcage, spewing blood and pushing broken sharp rib bones out. The queen raises her massive head, saliva drips from her crystalline sword teeth. The queen embraced a non-cocooned Valerie, her body froze before shivering uncontrollably as both her and the queen merged into one. The queen raised her head once more now having Valerie’s face, she opened her black eyes before uttering back to a cocooned Valerie. Make us whole again! Valerie awakes almost pulvulting from her seat before grabbing onto her ship’s console. “It was just a dream...” she looked over to see the blue-green planet. She checks her flight computer, the system map reads a G-Main Sequence star surrounded by eleven planets. The planet she is orbiting was the fifth one from its star. “You're not earth…” A TF-Alpha-1 Cargo Crawler slowly passes over the Videl, sporting the Weyland-Yutani logo. “Weyland-Yutani? What are they doing out here?” She maneuvers around the massive TF-Alpha, her ship’s computers pick up a transmission from the Cargo Crawler. “This is the Von Braun, you are currently entering Weyland Yutani space please state your business, over” a man with a thin mustache sporting a pair of glasses and a brown WY Logo hat, spoke with a deep baritone. “Von Braun, this is the Videl. I had to make an emergency FTL dropout, may I land?, over” she replied. Silence came from the other end, Valerie sighed, Von Braun broke its silence thirty minutes later. “Roger, we will provide you with an escort to the appropriate landing zone, stand-by, over and out” Soon a squadron of smaller crafts signaled Valerie to accompany them down to the planet surface. Once they broke through the clouds, a sea of green jungles dotted the main continent of the planet with a series of rivers snaking across its face. The squadron escorted the Videl through the Midori mountain sierra, Valerie couldn’t help but notice the massive metal structure. The structure had the Weyland-Yutani’s logo plastered over its face and at the foot of the structure was a large human colony. The Videl is then guided into the mountain carved out hangar bay. The Videl’s booster engines fold backwards onto the spacecraft’s wings before landing, the caged frame ****pit slides back as Valerie disembarks. 

She is greeted by a elegant japanese woman in dressed in business attire, Valerie could easily pick up on the women’s odd gait as she approached her, Valerie could tell she was a synthetic, “Greetings, Ms. Armstrong. I apologize for the inconvenience,” Valerie recognized this model of Synthetic, she was one of the Fujiko models. A very popular model commonly found in japanese communities, modelled to resemble a Yamato Nadeshiko, the perfect japanese woman. Primarily they were used as adjutants or maids but a lot of the time they were used as synthetic geishas or cosplay models. Fujiko was secretly reading Valerie’s neural pathways, seeing she was deep in thought. Valerie briefly caught a glimpse of the android smirking before the Fujiko model returned to a neutral face. “What is this place? Why did you bring me here?” Valerie asked. Fujiko smiled gently, “My employer has taken notice of your recent activities in the sector. She wants to give you a job since you are in the area. Come please,” the Fujiko model gestured to Valerie to follow her. “Alright,” she began following the android. They entered through the built in mountain facility and walked down a long corridor leading to the elevators. “So you know who I am,” but before Valerie could finish, Fujiko turned her head sideways towards her, “I know more than just your name Valerie Armstrong, your body is quite attractive, yes? How does it feel to be modelled after one of us?” It both honored and disgusted Valerie knowing her body was based on the Fujiko model, being half japanese herself. “Hey my old body was just as good if not better!” Valerie retorted. Again she caught the synthetic smirking at her, what was her deal? Valerie thought. 

Fujiko continued down the corridor, “This elevator leads to the main facility” she then gestures to Valerie to enter the elevator. Cautiously Valerie enters the elevator, Fujiko creeps up behind Valerie as the door closes behind them. Valerie inches closer to the elevator’s opposite end as she turns to face Fujiko, they both stood in the elevator with an awkward silence. “How did it feel?” Fujiko broke the silence, “How did what feel?” Valerie asked. “Having the Xenomorph XX121 growing inside of you? Were you scared? What was it like?” Valerie was disgusted by her questions, “It felt very uncomfortable, like suffocating, It would slither around inside you. Feeding on your organs, the only relief was when it decides to chew its way out of you. Satisfied?” Valerie crossed her arms. “One more. How did it feel having your brain extracted?” Fujiko asked. “I wasn’t even conscious, so I can’t tell you. Other than when I “woke” It felt weird not having a body” Valerie closes her eyes. “All you saw was darkness, you couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t open your mouth, move your toes or fingers. You were practically just nothing but your thoughts” Fujiko surprisingly understood. Which creeped Valerie out, “How did… nevermind, just take me to your employer” Valerie glanced back at Fujiko, seriously what is wrong with this android? Sometimes she would act “normal” but other times she acts…. 

“Human” Fujiko spoke, Valerie was startled, “What?” Valerie wondered if the android could read her thoughts. “Don’t be alarmed, Ms. Armstrong. I was registering you into our database. You are “human” aren’t you?” there was a hint of sarcasm in Fujiko’s voice. The elevator doors spring open, “Down this catwalk, after going through the zoo, you’ll reach the administration office, make a right then a left until you enter the Corporate Executive office then make a straight line towards the secretary then take a right turn and on the third door from the hallway you’ll meet my employer. Have a nice day” Fujiko smiled then waved goodbye as the elevator door closed in front of Valerie. Valerie sighs as she shakes her head, she walks down the catwalk as she makes her way into the “zoo”.  Several alien creatures were captmentalized inside a barely big enclosure, they were the native animals of this world. Rabbit eared dog-like creatures pant while sleeping on the muddy floor. The Theropod-like Tojirasaurus, its body resembled an outdated reconstruction of a raptor dinosaur, scaly with pronate claws. Its back was covered from neck to tail with thick maple-leaf dorsal plates, vaguely resembling the monster from the old japanese vids of Godzilla. Despite the vague resemblance, the creature was no bigger than earth’s allosaurus. The rest of the other native animals were unremarkable looking.

As she entered the administration building she followed Fujiko’s instructions, she opened the door to the Corporate Executive Office. Valerie frowned as she saw another Fujiko model android serving as the other Fujiko employer’s secretary.  “You made it” the Fujiko synth spoke with familiarity as if she was anticipating her arrival. “Yes I did” Valerie darted her eyes away, “Down the corridor..” Fujiko smiled. “Yeah, I know” Valerie almost made the mistake of turning left instead of right. Valerie grabs the second door’s handle, “Ms. Armstrong, it's the third door” Valerie walked down to the third door, “Its open” said a voice on the other side.

CHAPTER 8: THE QUEEN BEE

Date: November 31st, 2230
Locale: Planet Arhtom

Fujiko’s employer spun around in her big leather seat, she was a youthful white woman with ear length comb backed blonde hair. “Priscilla Vickers, it's a pleasure to finally meet you Ms. Armstrong. I have a job for you if you would oblige to accept it” Ms. Vickers asserted herself commandfully as she gestured for Valerie to sit down. Valerie sat in the chair in front of her. “What's the job?” Valerie asked, “A simple escort mission, nothing more, 1,500,000 Wey-Yu dollars should suffice” Priscilla ****ed her head. “1500K huh? I accept the job” Valerie reaches over to shake Priscilla’s hand. “Great, here take this” she taps at the computer console built into her desk, a card shoots out of a slender port. “Your clearance, it also serves as your hotel key. Don’t lose it” she then gestures for Valerie to take her leave. Valerie gets up to retrieve her keycard before leaving the room. Fujiko glances at Valerie as she leaves the Corporate Executive Office, she switches direct control from her secretary body back to her main body in her office at the Omega Site. “She is coming,” she caresses the window looking down at the Omega Site. Secreted resin covers the sides of the window as the omega site has since grown around the interior of the mega structure. Fujiko switches to one of her bodies on route to the Omega Site’s Hive. The Fujiko model abandons her previous task of taking samples to walk off her programmed route. The xenomorph warriors ignore her synthetic scent as they continue their daily tasks, spinning hosts inside cocoons. They have since abandoned the need to egg morph, since their praetorian had fully matured into a fertile Queen. The Fujiko model snuck past the royal guards as she entered the Queen’s chamber. There the Queen was suspended on her throne of resin, her oviraptor grew out from underneath her pelvis. “Your majesty” The Fujiko model smiled, “Lilith, your Children belong to us now, soon we...I will unlock your species secrets” she approaches the large xenomorph. “Soon there will be only one queen bee” Fujiko now is close enough to touch the Queen xenomorph, “That queen Bee will be me!” she points her thumb to herself, enraged Lilith snaps her jaws around the worker fujiko model’s arm lifting her up like a ragdoll before seizing her with her long arms. Lilith pulls the puppet android apart, white fluids and entrails spill onto the black resin floor. Fujiko returned to her main body, “Touchy” she comments.

Locale: Somewhere in space

A Yautja clanship Za’nacca of the Laughing Skull Clan races across the stars as they were being pursued by a Mala’kak Dreadnaught. The Dreadnaught powered up its photon cannons, and the clanship detected the enemy ship’s energy readings. The yautja pilots growl and roar as they take evasive maneuvers, the clanship swerves out of the photon beam's trajectory as the beam zooms past the yautja starcraft. The beam shifts its trajectory but the clanship quickly out maneuvers the beams, the beams manage to knick one of the clanship’s engines. Za’nacca jerks from the hit, many yautja warriors are catapulted from their feet. Zerachande lies in the healing room recovering from his injuries but he is stirred awake by the explosions. He flared his mandibles as he reached for his ceremonial knife. The dreadnaught fires their beam again, slicing off one of the clanship’s wings. Zerachande bursts onto the bridge, his pilots were desperately searching for a star system to jump. “What's the situation?” Zerachande asks his pilots. “Mala’kak” the pilots growled in unison. Zerachande glances at the starmap, he touches the holographic star; a random system with thirteen planets. “Take us here!” Zerachande growled. As the Za’nacca begins shifting to light speed, the engineer dreadnought photon beam shoots across the void, the Za’nacca vanishes before the beam could make contact. The engineer pilot swivels out of his biomechanical chair, the elephantine mask opens up to reveal one pissed off Mala’kak.

Locale: Planet Arhtom, Hangar Bay

Valerie was preparing the fuel to her starcraft, the crew from the ship she was ordered to escort came walking up to her. “Hey you, our escort?” said an overweight man with a bushy mustache wearing a baseball cap. “You, the captain, who’s ship I’m escorting?” Valerie replied. “Yeah, that would be me. So ummm heard you are kind of famous” the man attempts at conversation. “It seems word travels fast on this planet.” Valerie muttered to herself, “Hi, I am Valerie Armstrong, from Armstrong Industries” she puts on her polite face. “The name is Jerry Mc Little, and this here is my crew: Derrick Finkle, he is a bit retarded but the boy can sing like angel and he is a mighty fine good cook. Then there is my copilot Chung Lang, Moose is my navigator, and my husband Steve Bujo” Valerie just nods her head as he talks to her, “A pleasure to meet you. So what’cha got in there” Valerie smiled while raising her brows as she gestured towards Jerry's ship. The Snuggems was an old ZCT cargo vessel, “Onboard the Snuggems, nothing much, just a payload we received from Omega Labs. Well it was a mighty fine pleasure speaking to you Ms. Armstrong” With that exchange both pilots went their separate ways back to their ships. Both took off into orbit, their destination was the Animus system, Planet Nagaigo. The Videl was the first to depart the hangar then it was the Snuggems. Their FTL drives brought them to the Animus system, Animus-A was a red dwarf star, while Animus-B was a yellow dwarf star much like the Sun. The system had a total of thirteen planets, Seven of them orbited Animus B while six orbited Animus A. The Videl escorted the Snuggems to the sixth planet from Animus B. Nagaigo, had an atmosphere and temperature comparable to late triassic Earth however most of the planet was arid highlands, scattered large lakes dotted its surface. “Snuggems to Ground Control, do we have a landing? Over” Captain Mc Little spoke through the radio, “Snuggems, This is Ground Control. You are clear to land,” the ground control replied. “Roger that,” Mc Little replied, he turned to his crew, “Okay let's set this big turd down already” The snuggems and the videl begin their descent into the atmosphere. The Videl’s and the Snuggem’s computers began reading abnormal readings on their sensors, “Ah what the hell?” Mc Little reads the computer, INCOMING SPATIAL DISTORTION the computer bleeps. A damaged yautja clanship materializes right behind them, the Snuggems and the clanship collide into each other; taking its wing and heavily damaging its right engine as both starships fall to the planet surface. The Videl zooms to the Snuggems, desperately Valerie tries to decelerate the Snuggem’s descent by pushing her spacecraft up against the snuggems for support. As the three spaceships entered the atmosphere, the yautja clanship crash landed far in the jagged mountains while the Snuggems and Videl stayed airborne for a while longer. The Videl’s computers started blaring a damage report as her wing began taking damage. Valerie ignored the computer’s warnings. “Captain M****tle don’t worry I got your wing” WARNING INCOMING OBSTRUCTION! Valerie turns to see a massive rock spire inching closer and closer to their ships. The Snuggems veered away from the rock spire, forcing the Videl to do the same. “****!” Valerie cussed, she checked to see the Snuggems but the ship vanished from her sight. “Son of… Mc Little, Mc Little, are you still there?” Valerie radioed in to the snuggems. All she could hear was static, “sshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh….we areshhhhh...shhhhhhh….Alivshhhhhh” Mc Little transmitted. “Hang in there I’mma come getcha” Valerie navigated the Videl towards the snuggems last visual contact.

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, Snuggem Crash Site.

Mc Little turns to his crew, “Don’t worry help is on the way….” blood trickled down his forehead. “What about the cargo?” asked Steve. “Ah ****….” Mc Little tried to reach for the radio, “Ahhhhhh” he cried, “Damn it” he pushed through the pain to transmit another message, “Videl, this is Snuggem… Don’t come looking for us, I repeat don’t come looking for us.

“Videlssshhhhh,...isshhhhh,...Comeshhhh,...for usshhhhhh,...don’tshhhh,...usshhhh” the transmission was too broken up for Valerie to understand, “You are breaking up… Hold on I have you on visual, hang tight boys, I’m coming to getcha'' Valerie smiles as she prepares to land near the crash sight. “Don’t….land….” Mc Little transmitted. Valerie spotted something crawling out of the damaged cargo hull. A dark grey elongated fathead peered out of the torn hull, its eyeless face sent a chill down Valerie’s spine. Instinctually she veered away from the crash site.

CHAPTER 9: THE REUNION

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, Snuggem Crash Site.

The xenomorph dropped to all fours as the videl veered away from the Snuggems. Valerie targeted the xenomorphs, she hesitates to fire her starcraft’s cannons. Her head starts to feel funny as she stares at her flight controls, a facehugger leaps from the console controls at her face, Valerie instinctually pulls back her throttle as she breaks from engagement. It took Valerie a few moments to realize it was a hallucination, nothing more. She flies back around to engage the xenomorphs, again her head starts to feel funny as another hallucination takes over her. This time a pair of xenomorph arms reach from around her seat to grab her. Valerie disengaged the xenomorphs again, her artificial heart was pounding in her synthetic rib cage. MAINTENANCE IS ADVISED, the onboard systems began speaking inside her head. NEURO LEVELS ABOVE ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS, SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY. Several Xenomorph hallucinations stare at her through the glass of her ship’s canopy, Tears start rolling down Valerie’s face as she abandons the Snuggems to their fate.

It stood back up as it watched the Videl grow smaller and smaller before disappearing in the horizon, the xenomorph viciously peeled back its lips revealing its sharp metal grey teeth; it unleashed a hellish screech. More xenomorphs of similar caliber began emerging from the damaged cargo hull. A few runners were quick to run out from the main horde, the runners were distinct from the warriors due to lacking the dorsal tubes of the human spawned xenomorph warriors. The runners began searching the crevices of the rocky terrain leaving the warriors behind, the warriors were scouting the ship, looking for building supplies for their new hive. The runners were quick to stumble up an oasis, large mangrove-like trees dotted the lake, tall grass-like reeds dotted the shoreline of the lake. A strange six legged armoured antelope-like creature was spotted drinking from the lake, its head was adorned with what looked like a giant fingernail. The Nailelope lifts its head up while sniffing the air, “Yeeuunn Yeeuunn” it calls out to the rest of its herd. The runners sneak off into the reads like a pride of lions, the Nailelope all raise their heads up sniffing the air. A runner bursts from the reeds, claws stretched out. The Nailelope back kicks the runner in the face, the next runner spits a jet of acid on to the Nailelope’s leg injuring it. The two runners quickly bring the Nailelope down, they fire their inner jaws into its weakened flesh as they proceed to eat it.

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, Za’nacca Crash Site.

Zerachande awakens in a daze, slowly he pulls himself up as he sees the bridge was in disrepair, green fluorescent blood splattered all over the flight controls indicating the pilots didn’t survive the crash. He slowly made his way through what was left of the clan ship, Rouyeyin, Swayande, Tass’dhou-di, the huntresses, youngbloods and unbloods were slowly recovering from the crash as well. The yautja quickly began gathering supplies for the worst case scenario. Zerachande could smell wires burning, he growled as a fire began to take roots, he then gestured to his clan to abandon the ship. One by one the yautja drop out of the escape holes in the Za’nacca. The Laughing Skull Clan quickly scaled up a rock face before gaining some distance away from the ship. Zerachande could hear the Za’nacca explode in the distance. Zerachande growls mournfully, his trophy collection he spent building up for 50 years since he was an unblood, was now all gone. The huntress Atori commanded the other females to set up the distress beacon. The yautja quickly set up camp from what supplies they brought with them. Several warriors guarded the camp’s perimeter in case anyone or anything would stumble upon them. Zerachande was sharpening his naginata as he gave the binary stars a quick glance, when he noticed two creatures standing on the adjacent cliff face between the yautja camp and a vast ravine. Both male and female creatures resemble muscular oomans with chests covered in natural body markings resembling tattoos on their chest, stomach, and thighs. Their lowered legs were covered in thick boney armor as well as their forearms. Sharp claws extend from both their feet and hands, their forearms have a natural blade-like claw growing out from the wrist that extends back to the elbow. A long segmented tail that resembles that of a kainde amedha’s tail extends from their hindquarters. A pair of seemingly vestigial wings adorn their upper backs. Last thing was their heads were very ooman-like as well but their eyes were more like that of a hungry predator than ooman, red markings line their tear ducts down to their cheek. Their heads were covered in short spiky hair, but a pair of wing-shaped horns grew out from their skulls. The tall one was mostly a light purple shade from his torso up with shades of black coloring his legs, tail, body markings, hair, and horns. The short one was mostly tan save for her body markings, hair, horns, tail, lower legs and forearms.

The Nagaians stared back at the yautja, they noticed that they were roughly like themselves in body shape but their long fleshy dreads caught them off guard and odd scaly skin texture. The Nagaians became disturbed when they saw the yautja remove their masks as they ate, their four mandible jaws on top of a more humanoid jaw, made the Nagaians even more cautious. “What are they?” the female spoke, “I don’t know” the male spoke. “The fire scale one, it is looking at us,” the female bared her razor sharp teeth. “Let’s report this back to chieftain” the two nagaians quickly removed themselves from Zerachande’s line of sight. The two nagaians raced down the slopes before jumping over the large crevices, the pair leapt and jumped across the broken rock formation until they reached one of the lakes. A herds of Nailelopes race across the grassy plains surrounding the lake. Massive six legged shelled sauropod-like creatures lumbered alongside the Nailelope herds. The Nagaians leap down off the rock ledge onto the plains as they encroach on their village’s secret entrance.

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, Scott Town

The Videl soars over the colony, the Videl enters autopilot mode as it eases itself down. The booster engines fold on to the wings as it completes its landing. She powers down her engines, the ****pit canopy pops open allowing Valerie to make her descent to the concrete floor. The ground crew rush over to assist Valerie, fuel lines are soon put in place as they refuel the Videl. Valerie was soon escorted to the department of transportation, “Where’s the other ship? What happened to the Snuggems?” asked the man in charge, Nickey Housse. He was a short pudgy man with brown hair and a thick mustache. “I abandoned them…” Valerie finally spoke, “aliens… there were aliens in the cargo…” their razor sharp diamond-esque teeth haunt her waking eyes. “Bring up a psyche profile on this girl,” Nickey asked one of his assistants. A tall slender asian woman, wearing an all white attire and sported thin glasses.

After sometime the assistant comes back with a folder, she gestures to Mr. Housse to enter the next room “Her name is Valerie Armstrong, she is the daughter of Mark Armstrong CEO and Founder of Armstrong Industries. She has flight training and went to college for a business degree. I did some hard digging and came across a top secret file. What I found out was very bizarre. She is technically dead”

“Dead? Her” Mr. Housse points at the one way window at Valerie in disbelief. “How is...she’s an android isn’t she?” Mr. Housse put the pieces together.

“Not quite, according to the files. Her brain is human,” mentioned the assistant.

“So what then? She’s a cyborg? Do you know this puts us in a difficult position? So what else does those top secret files say?” Mr. Housse asked.

“Her condition was terminal, the gestating Xenomorph XX121 was already in its last embryonic growth development” the assistant continued reading the medical files.

“Eh what?” Mr. Housse snapped.

“She had a chestburster growing inside of her” the assistant lowers the papers in mild irritation.

“She had one of those things inside of her? Why didn’t they remove it?” Mr. Housse asked.

“It was in its last embryonic growth development, removing it could have complicated things. Not to mention that in cases where patients survived chestburster removal, patients died shortly after from left over alien biomass. So beyond cloning which is illegal, synthetic personality transference would be the only viable option, even if it's in a legal grey area” the assistant continued.

“Poor girl, she must have been terrified of those monsters. How’s her psychological health?” Mr. Housse asks.

“Her trauma has left her psychologically compromised, from the psytriatric reports stating she hallucinates seeing xenomorphs. Should someone like her be piloting a spacecraft?” the assistant asks her superior.

“I’ll take from here Ms. Ling. We will leave out the cyborg part, write she is an emotionally traumatized girl from her experiences with an alien. Can you do that?” Mr. Housse asks his assistant.

“Yes, Mr. Housse. What will become of this girl?”

“She is unfit for space travel, I will lock her ship down until further notice. Start the investigation in where the Snuggems went down, tear her ship apart if you have too” he orders his assistant. Mr. House then proceeds to pick up a phone, “Security, escort Ms. Armstrong to Isolation cell B5”

Valerie’s head started to feel funny again, she heard a loud thud, a xenomorph drone was staring at her in the face. Its silvery fangs dripped with thick saliva oozing from its human-like jaws. Valerie peered into its translucent domed face, she was barely able to make out the empty human eye sockets within the domed head. The hallucination was very lifelike, Valerie knew it wasn’t real, how could it be real? The door opens up, Valerie looks over to the door to see security entering the room, she looks back to the xenomorph, it is gone.

“Valerie Armstrong, you are coming with us” said the guard. Valerie nodded as she followed the guards, they guided her to the isolation cells and to her surprise she was locked in isolation. “Let me out! You can’t do this to me!” Valerie banged on the door.

CHAPTER 10: THE ESCAPE

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, Scott Town

The investigators raid the Videl, they extract the information from her computers before taking their shuttles to the snuggem’s last recorded location.

Locale: Cerberus Station, Planet Julianos.

A massive anchorpoint station orbits above the green gas giant Julianos, the weyland-yutani logo plastered on almost every wall. There in the main labs, the yautja youngblood was strapped to a medical bed. Sarachande slowly awakened to a bright medical lamp, oomans hovered over him as they checked the computers to read his vitals. He looked at the table on the farside of the room, there a facehugger laid dead in a dishpan. Near the ooman doctors were scalpels covered in thick light green luminescent blood. He then looked down and saw a stitched incision on his chest, glances at one of the oomans carrying a cylindrical container no doubt containing the predalien chestburster. The ooman doctors quickly glance at sarachande, they begin to panic as they try to pacify the young yautja. Sarachande remained eerily calm as they sedated him.

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, Snuggems Crash Site.

Zerachande leads his clan across the rocky landscape, their wrist computers sending a signal into their biomasks. Zerachande moves ahead of his clan onto a large boulder, he switches vision modes to electrovision. The snuggems were crawling with the kainde amedha, their exoskeletons illuminated green on the electrovision. Zerachande signaled his clan to quiet down less they draw the attention of the hard meats. Frustrated, the xenomorphs began hissing aggressively at each other. The biggest of the drones, fired its inner jaws into one of the more submissive ones. The smaller drone fell to the ground bleeding profusely; shrieking in pain. The bigger drone seized the smaller drone’s left back tube and tail, lifting the injured one above its head. The smaller drone shrieks as it struggles to free itself but its screams are cut short when its body is thrown into the snuggem’s hull. Chitin, soft organs, and acid blood crash and splash against the ship’s hull. The blood eats its way through the ship, creating a whole the size of a chair. The big drone shrieks to rally the others. One by one, the xenomorphs squeeze themselves into the hole.

Zerachande watched in the distance as the kainde amedha butched one of their own to gain access to the ship’s interior. The elite yautja signals his people to advance away from the crash site, not wishing to endanger his clan when the odds are not in their favor. A pack of runners hiss from a nearby crevice, Zerachande growled as he deploys his naginata. The runners charge into the yautja full of zeal. Zerachande impales one, he shoves his naginata in further with all of his might. The runner shrieks as acid blood drips from its wounds. The runner raises its claws in the air before bringing them down on the yautja elite. The claws scrap against his biomask and pauldron. Zerachande head butted the xenomorph, dislodging some of its teeth. The runner falls backwards, its body twitches in its final moments. Swayande was fending off a runner with his combi-stick, while Rouyeyine deploys both of his wrist blades to take on the kainde amedha himself. Tass-dhou-di fires his burner into one of the kainde amedha, its copper-exoskeleton explodes into a shower of acid. The xenomorphs at the snuggems turn their attention onwards towards the rocky landscape. A second large drone led the remaining xenomorphs outside of the ship towards the boulders. A human shuttle zooms overhead catching the lead drone’s attention.

The shuttle pilot looks down from his ****pit, “Oh that’s not good” he stares at the xenomorphs gathering on the ground. “Base, this is eagle-1. The Snuggem’s cargo is compromised. Specimens are loose and about, I repeat, Specimens are loose and about; over” the shuttle retreats across the horizon. The second big drone leads the rest of the xenomorphs in the opposite direction of the yautja; they now travel west in the direction of the shuttle. When the shuttle arrives at Scott Town, it flies over the massive electrical fences that surround the colony perimeter. Large bulldozers return from the south passage, its tires covered in arrows fired by the natives. The shuttle lands in the starport, its pilots come running out in a panic. The pilot, Jacob Malory bursts into the department of transportation’s office. “Mr. Housse, sir! Mr. Housse, sir!” The pilot was out of breath.

“What is it Mr. Malory?”

“Sir about my report..” Before the pilot would rereport his findings, he is interrupted by a voice over the computer.

“Mr. Housse they are back again” said the gate guards, “Damn natives” Mr. Housse curses.

There stood two teenage nagaians, the girl was dressed in a fur bikini and the boy was dressed in a mixture of furs and bone armor. “Akae and Takashin” Mr. Housse spoke over the computer, “What do you kids want this time?” Mr. Housse asked.

“Our elder has fallen ill, we beg of you can you spare us your medicine? ” Akae asked politely. Akae was typical of Nagaians in general build, if somewhat shorter than average and her companion Takashi is typical of male nagaians in build, muscular and tall.

“Look I know you people are struggling and all but this isn’t a Red Cross, we are running low on our own supplies” Mr. Housse barked through the computer, “Look I’ll cut you kids a deal, we just lost a shipment, maybe if you go look for our missing shipment; I’ll let you have some of our stock, sound like a deal?”

The two young nagaians exchanged glances at each other. Before the nagaians could reply, Malory started shouting, “Sir, I found the shipment!”

Mr. Housse turns around in his chair, “Geeze Malroy, I was in the middle of something? Shut up! Wait what did you say about the shipment? You found it?” Mr. Housse was intrigued, “Sorry Kids, better luck next…”

“Wait sir, this is important, it affects them as much as us!” Malory interrupts again.

“Heh, sure it does” Mr. Housse disconnects the feed to colony gates.

“Sir, the specimens are loose. If left unchecked they could be here within a day” Malory continued, Mr. House glared at Malory before reconnecting the feed to the nagaians outside.

“Well kids, it's your lucky day. Come inside, my assistant will take you to the pharmacy” Mr. Housse spoke through the computer. He then turns to Malory, “What? I’m a hardass, not an *******” he spins back around in his chair.

The colony blast doors slide up into the gate frame, Grahnnnn, the door locks in place. Akae and Takashin crossed into the threshold. They see another blast door on the other side of the tunnel-esque gatehouse. Grahnnn, the blast door behind them shuts closed. Grahnnn, The blast door in front of them then opens up. The two nagaians wander into the colony, Mr. Housse’s assistance walked up to the teenage natives, she gestured to Akae and Takashin to follow her.

“We built schools for these aliens...I mean natives and what do we get? Moochers and thieves” a man whispered to his colleague while glaring at the two nagaians passing by.
“Hey at least Nagaian poontang is better than arcturian poontang, am I right guys?” commented his friend. The others burst out in fits of laughter, while the glaring man exchanged a serious stare to his colleagues.

Later that evening, on the outskirts of Scott’s Town the xenomorphs gather behind the boulders. The lead warrior hisses to the runners to scout out the perimeter. The runners slowly climbed down into the valley, the dirt reeked of gasoline and the scent of prey. The quadrupedal xenomorphs carefully snuck behind any large rock big enough to conceal their forms, waiting for nightfall. The runners have picked up two large sources of prey scent, the colony beyond the rocks and the scattered small boulders between them. The runners splitted into smaller packs as they head off to both prey sources. The leading runner pack dash out from the cover of the large rocks, they quickly overrun the few guards guarding the colony entrance. A few runners try to climb over the gate house only to be zapped to death by the electric perimeter fence.

The second runner pack swarms over to the seemingly random rock placements. The runners can smell the scent of prey all over the rocks. A curious xenomorph runner pushes the small boulder with its head. Once the small boulder was dislodged from its original placement, the scent intensified. The runner hisses joyfully at its accomplishment, the other runners glance at their sister. The accomplished runner squeezes herself into the small crevice, her tail thrashes around before slipping deeper into the small hole.

“WARNING! INTRUDERS AT SOUTH GATE!” the colony computer blared over the intercoms. The colonial security force awake to the alarms, they quickly leap out of their beds as they dress themselves. They then rush to the armor to don their weapons and body armor before heading to the gatehouse and the security control room. The guards in the control room viewed on multiple monitors, the south gate entrance was swarming with copper colored banana head creatures. The runners were dragging the outside security personnel away from the gates. The security force opens the gatehouse as they rush into the tunnel, the gate closes behind them as they double time to the next gate door. The blast door opens to the outside, the security force begins to fire on the xenomorph runners. The ones they manage to hit schriek as they fall over dead. The other runners quickly drop their prey as they bolt towards the security guards. The guards fire open the creatures but the eyeless bastards when directly confronted were too fast to hit. They tackle the guards, head biting into their skulls before moving on to their next target. One of the remaining guards drops his M41A Pulse as he rushes over to the security panel, seeing his friends being butched or dragged off into the night; he didn’t want to suffer the same fate. He pulled down the emergency switch, and the blast doors began to shut close. The guards turned in terror as the blast door began close behind them. One of the runners bolts towards the closing blast door, its slender form manages to squeeze beyond the closing doors into the gatehouse tunnel.

The runner spots the security guard attempting to release the city door, fast like lightning the runner closes the distance between predator and prey. The interior door began to open, the runner was startled by the opening of the blast door for a moment. The coward guard attempts to run past the copper xenomorph, the runner quickly refocuses her gaze back to the guard. She charges into the fleeing human, sending him flying across the pavement. She launches her inner jaws into his spine, crippling the coward before bolting off into the colony interior. The security force in the control room scramble to close the interior gate but it was already too late, one of them had already entered the colony.

The remaining security force scrambled to hunt down the runner but alone a xenomorph is extremely crafty. The runner instinctually took to the air ducts to hide from the humans. She observed from the grates as the security teams began their sweep. Her senses picked up an electrical source, she navigated through the ducts to the powerstation. She removes the grate separating her from the powerstation interior. Her slender biomechanical form spills out of the air duct, she raises her head as she rises on her hand legs. She lunges at the power box, clawing it before firing her inner jaws into electrical components. The electricity surges through her biomechanical body, knocking the little xenomorphs backwards. The runner falls on her face, dead.

The powered doors suddenly all open, with the exception of the blast doors. Sensing the fences no longer were producing an electrical current the runners screech out to the warriors. The lead warrior growls to her packmates as they press the attack, the bipedal xenomorphs charge straight towards the colony gates. They quickly overran the colony walls as they entered the colony, the remaining security force began opening fire into the warriors but they were quickly overpowered by the black xenomorphs. The colonists hid inside their rooms as the sounds of gunfire and xenomorph screeching echoed in the halls. Valerie awakened from her cell, she peeked through her cell door’s window. She saw security running past the window port, and they began opening fire at something.

Valerie began banging on the door, “Hey what's going on?” she asked. “It's none of your concern, citizen. Remain where you are and hide” the security officer demanded.

A man screamed not too far away, “****!” the security officer bolted past the door. Valerie continued to look through the small window. She could see the silhouettes of the guards' shadows passing by a wall before disappearing into the adjacent hallway. Gunfire, followed by the howling screams of the officers. Then a dead silence.

Valerie continued to peer through the window. Finally a shadow graced the back lit wall, it wasn’t human. Banana-shaped head, two dorsal tubes on its back with a single dorsal spike in the center of its spine, and a long scorpion-esque tail. Valerie’s eyes widened in terror as memories of her cocoonment came surfacing in her mind. Valerie dashes to hide her under her bunk as the xenomorph turns its gaze towards the cells. It lets out a sharp hisses as it approaches the door.

CHAPTER 11: THE FIGHT

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, catacombs.

The runners and shortly afterwards; warriors, slid into the tight crevices of the holes that were formerly covered by the small boulders. The cramped tunnels then opened to a massive chasm. The xenomorphs curle themselves into a ball as they plummeted into the dark waters below. As they sink, they unfurl themselves, they swim gracefully to the surface. Their dorsal tubes burst through the water like shark fins, followed by the top of their head and their long segmented tails.

The Nagaian braves were alerted by the splashes. “Halt, who goes there?” shouted the nagaian brave, as he approached the dark shores. A long segmented skeletal tail rises out of the water followed by an elongated ribbed and seemingly eyeless head. The Nagaian brave reaches for his spear as the rest of the beast arose from the water, two humanoid arms and legs attached to a vaguely skeletal biomechanical torso. Without hesitation the xenomorph warrior dashes out of the water, the nagaian brave barely had enough time to block the warrior’s initial attack.

The warrior grabbed the Brave’s spear, its biomechanical muscles bulged as it applied pressure on the bone spear. The warrior hisses as it shatters the bone spear into pieces. The Brave falls backwards as the xenomorph falls onto all fours, the warrior raises its head to face the brave. He barely caught a glimpse of something crawling on its back. The Brave charges towards the warrior, the warrior rises on its legs as stretches its hand out to grasp the nagaian by the face. The Brave’s eyes widen as he is thrown to the ground, the warrior pins the nagaian to the floor as a facehugger comes crawling down its arm. The Brave struggles but it is no use, the warrior turns the brave’s head to face the larval xenomorph. The facehugger wraps its finger-like legs around the nagaian’s head and its tail around his throat.

The warrior hisses to the other xenomorphs to attack the Nagaian Village. The braves assemble charged in with their spears, swords, and axes. With the strength of the Warriors and speed of the Runners, the xenomorphs overpowered the braves’ best efforts. The nagaians lucky enough to die quickly were cut down by the xenomorph’s claws, impaled by their stinger tails, and their skulls crushed by their inner jaws. The unlucky ones were gathered to be cocooned and later implanted. The xenomorphs chased after the few nagaians that managed to flee. As their prey headed for higher ground, the xenomorphs suddenly halted their pursuit. The warriors and runners returned to the raised village, they recycled the bodies of those slain into building material for their new hive.

Meanwhile, Valerie resigns to her bunker as the xenomorph peered in the window. Valerie could barely see the human skull buried within the xenomorph’s dark translucent face. The lights die out, the door slides open. The emergency lights kick in, red lights illuminate the room. The xenomorph slowly approaches Valerie, its mouth drooling profusely as it makes its way to her. Valerie was paralized with fear as the xenomorphs halted its movements, its head jittering as it peels back its lips. It opens its jaws, drool and spit comes leaking out as its inner jaws extend from the dark recess of its mouth. Valerie closes her eyes, fearing the worst is about to come. The xenomorph retracts its inner jaws, instead the xenomorph grabs a hold of Valerie’s head. The creature carefully examines Valerie, the transparency of its face becomes more clear when up closer. She could barely make out that its eye sockets weren’t so empty, she only saw it for a moment, solid black orbs caught the refractured lens of light.

The xenomorph lost interest in her from the neck down as it repeatedly kept examining her head time and time again. It was her brain, the only thing left of her that is human. The alien is confused whether to ignore her or take her in as a host or eat what little biomass she had. The smell of her synthetic body was keeping it from doing the latter, but yet it continues to hold her in place. Valerie barely caught a glimpse of a heat shimmering, was there a gas leak? She didn’t smell any gas. The xenomorph shrieks in her face, its clawed nails bury themselves deep into the scalp and the back of her ear. White fluid oozes from her wounds. Valerie was just mere inches away from a serrated blade sticking out of the xenomorph warrior’s sternum. However some of its blood is now eating away at her shoulder. The xenomorph thrashes its tail. Valerie saw the heat shimmers forming around the alien’s tail, the exoskeletal plating buckles in as if someone is squeezing it. A pair of metal blades seemingly manifest out of thin air , above the warrior’s tail. The blades come down slicing the creature’s tail off. The xenomorph howls as it crashes into the bunk, valerie was forced to lay next to the collapsed monster. Valerie saw a massive spear sticking out of the xenomorph’s back. Valerie then looked up at the heat shimmers, Valerie heard a series of clicking noises out of nowhere. Soon the heat shimmers gave way to a tall muscular alien creature wearing armor and fishnets.

He retracts his wrist blades as he retrieves his combi stick out of the dead xenomorph. Valerie watched as the new creature kneeled down on the dead one. With a quick slice with its glaive, it removes the xenomorph’s head. Valerie could feel the creature’s grasp on her head weakening. She sighs in relief, the combi stick is then stabbed into the floor between Valerie and the xenomorph. She is lifted up by the head once more, the yautja gives her a hard stare. “Error...error..damage critical” Valerie pretended to be one of the “stupid” synthetics. The yautja just gently tossed her to the floor before grabbing his combi stick on the out.

Sorry redoing Chapter 12, also I messed up my initial date when Valerie got implanted. It should be 2193 instead of 2192. 2193 is when the xenomorphs break loose on earth

CHAPTER 12: THE RESOLVE

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, Scott Town

Valerie slowly stood up as the lights were flickering on and off. She knew she had to get moving. She slowly inches her way to the backlit wall before stumbling upon the bodies of the security guards she had spoken with just moments ago. She grabs one of the deceased's M41A Pulse Rifle, she looks on its side, “05”, she kneels down as she searches the dead guards for an ammo clip. She spots one on a guard furthest away from the group, she crawls over to him. She pulls the clip out of his dead hand, the clip was covered in copious amounts of slime. “Yuck” she comments. Drool drips on her shoulder, Valerie quickly throws herself back as a long segmented tail comes shooting down from the ceiling like a viper.

She quickly aims at the tail, she closes her eyes as fires the pulse rifle, “04” “03” “02” “01” “00”. She hears the ticking, indicating she is out of ammo; She misses the tail completely. Valerie quickly removes the empty clip from the rifle before slapping the new one in. “99” the ammo reader updates to the new clip. The tail retracts as it snakes its back up into the ceiling. A pair of long fingered hands reach out of the air duct. Followed by an elongated ribbed caged eyeless head sporting sharp teeth. The rest of its body came into view as it slowly wiggled its body out of the ducts. The creature slowly stands on its feet. Valerie fires the Pulse Rifle while keeping her eyes open, the xenomorph dodges the bullets as she misses again. The xenomorph curled its tail up like a scorpion, Valerie took a few steps back, memories of her being impaled courses through her mind. The xenomorph shrieks as it darts its tail at Valerie, her quick synthetic reflexes allowed her to dodge the xenomorph’s stinger.

Valerie glances at the ammo reader “89” and sneers at the xenomorph. She aims down the sights of the gun, she holds the Gunstock against her shoulder for stability. She fires a hail of bullets into the xenomorph, the first bullet punches a whole in its neck, the second grazes its face, the third gets stuck in the armour around its sternum, and the fourth grazes its left arm. “85” Acid bleeds from the xenomorph’s neck. Valerie aims down the sights, she targets the alien’s neck before firing again. The caseless bullets rips a massive hole in the xenomorph’s neck. The xenomorph hisses as it enters its death throes. Valerie checks her gun, “72” she sighs before heading off.

Meanwhile… Zerachande and his band of predators were scouting the rooftops of the ooman colony. The sounds of pulse rifle fire and screeching of oomans and kainde amedha echoed throughout the colony. Zerachande spotted one of their scouts returning.

“Honorable Zerachande” he bowed, “The kainde amedha are establishing a hive within the heart of the ooman settlement. The rest of the pyode amedha have taken shelter in the medicinal chamber. Honorable Zerachande, how should we proceed?”

“We hunt” Zerachande answered the scout, “We shall give them nan-deThan-guan” the scout and the other yautja begin howling in agreement. The yautja leap down off the roof as they spread out through the colony.

Valerie carefully moved about the empty corridors, signs of battles left acid burn holes in the floors and walls. The bodies of mutilated security litter the ground in pieces. Valerie watchfully bends down and collects the ammo. She then proceeded down the adjacent corridor, she glanced at the wall big bold letters saying “ADMINISTRATION” plastered on it. She headed to the main office, she turned down to the next corridor then the next but then stopped in her tracks. Secreted resin covering the floors, ceilings, and walls of the halls. The admin door was torn from its hinges, she slowly moved in to investigate. The room got progressively darker as she traversed deeper into the Administration offices. Her robotical eyes brightened the visual feeds to her brain giving her excellent lowlight vision. She spots a combat knife stabbed into a table.

She spots an open ovomorph. She cautiously approaches the egg, she shoves her gun’s barrel inside of it. Nothing happened, she pulls the barrel out and sees the ovomorph is empty. She glances over to a pale thing in the corner of her eye. It was a facehugger, but it was dead. She then glanced up to see the assistant from before is now cocooned. “****” Valerie cussed as looked over to see many of the administration people that were cocooned to the wall. The assistant grabs Valerie by the arm, “Please...kill me… I c-can feel it…. Chewing..arggahhhhhhhh” the assistant’s shirts starts to be soaked in blood. A bulge begins to form between her breasts, the bulge explodes into a shower of blood as a chestburster emerges from the assistant's sternum.

Valerie tries to move away but the assistant’s death grip prevents her from doing so. The chestburster snaked its eyeless face towards Valerie. It gnashed its teeth at her as it pulled itself free of the woman’s shattered rib cage. Valerie saw the chestburster flop awkwardly to the ground before it coiled itself like a rattlesnake. Valerie aimed her pulse rifle at the creature, the chestburster quickly slithers away. Valerie breaks the assistant’s arm as she frees herself. The other cocooned admin people slowly began to groan as their chests began to bulge as well. Valerie huddles in a corner as she witnesses the cocooned yelping as their chestbursters are born.

Valerie forces herself to stand up, she glances at the combat knife. She reaches for it and grabs it by its handle. She then walked towards the chestbursters, without hesitation she stabbed them one by one. Acid blood soaks the resin covered floors. Valerie drops the knife, its blade now completely dissolved. A sharp hiss fills the air, Valerie stands back up. She ventures further into the main office, where a large xenomorph was lying snuggled in a heap of resin.

This one looked different from the xenomorphs she ever encountered. She was familiar with the eggs and larval stages; however on encountering the adult castes she was only familiar with the copper colored flat-back Runners and the bipedal black colored Drones and Warriors. This one was far larger than a regular warrior, she glanced over at the floor, she spotted the discarded remains of a warrior’s shell lying tattered on the ground. It just molted into a praetorian. Valerie aimed her rifle at the praetorian, but she couldn’t pull that trigger. She couldn’t risk alerting the others, she has to play it safe. So she lowered her rifle and slowly retreated out of the administration office. The praetorian hisses after discovering the dead chestbursters, Valerie ran. Xenomorphs began crawling out of the resin covered walls.

A xenomorph warrior emerges from the floor to cut off Valerie from escaping. The other warriors, drones, and runners were too soon to catch up with Valerie. The floor warrior shoots out its inner jaws at Valerie, corralling her back to the other xenomorphs. Valerie forced herself to aim and fire into the warrior. The xenomorph is shot up in its core region, the momentum forces the alien backwards. Valerie leaps over the melting remains of the xenomorph. But smacks into something hard, it felt like she collided into somebody but there was nothing there. Then it moved, the heat shimmer creature was back. It uncloaked then glanced down at her.

Zerachande switched his biomask vision to metallic mode, and detected the ooman girl was a synthetic but one thing struck him odd, there was a metallic cage in the brain area where most synthetics just had a synthetic brain. Zerachande would investigate but the kainde amedha would not wait. He switched his vision range to electrovision. He turned to face the charging kainde amedha. His trilaser sight beams on the lead xenomorph, his biomask marks it with a triangle crosshair. The triangle locks on to the kainde amedha. The plasma castor on his shoulder begins to heat up, a blue ball of plasma is fired into the lead xenomorph; It explodes on contact.

Swayande bolts past his elder, swinging his combi stick around. While Rouyeyin and Tassa-dhou-ti extended their wrists blades to their fullest extent as they charged forward. The xenomorphs overwhelmed the ****y young yautja.

“Eat my ki’cti-pa!” Swayande shoves his combi stick down one of the xenomorph’s throats.

Rouyeyin stabs a runner in the head before dragging it directly in front of himself, he pulls out his wrist blades to stab it a couple more times. Tass-dhou-ti bear hugs a xenomorph warrior, using his massive muscular bulk he crushes the xenomorph’s spine before violently throwing it down.

Swayande throws his combi-stick into an adjacent warrior, he grabs the handle of the spear then swings it with all of his might, throwing the paled kainde amedha into its comrades. Swayande leaps at the fallen pack of xenomorphs, he plants his combi-stick into the injured one’s head before deploying his wrist blades to finish off the others.

Rouyeyin and Tassa-dhou-ti both stare at Swayande, “kha’bj-te” they both retorted.
“Kek, don’t be jealous of my slick moves” Swayande retorted back. Valerie couldn’t understand a word they were saying as the large humanoid aliens spoke their alien tongue.

Zerachande further examines the girl, through his biomask he sees through the metal cage to his surprise it was holding an organic brain. Zerachande grabbed the girl by the throat. He could see fear in the synthetic’s eyes, “h’dlak jehdin” he growled at her as she struggled to free herself. The other yautja gather around the honorable yautja, “It’s an ooman?” said one of the females. “No sister, it's one of those ooman-machines,” replied another female.

“Let’s take it apart and see how it ticks,” said another female yautja.

More xenomorphs arrive from the administration office, the yautja ready themselves for an encore, but then a pack of xenomorphs arrive from behind them. Zerachande drops Valerie back on to the ground, he picks up her M41A Pulse rifle to ensure she poses no threat for the time being.

Swayande leaps into the second wave of kainde amedha, swinging his spear into the xenomorph’s necks. Severing their jugulars in the midst of their decapitation. A xenomorph warrior fires its inner jaws into his shoulder while a Runner fires its inner jaws into his calf. Rouyeyin runs over to save his brother but a pack of runners quickly run towards Rouyein to halt his rescue attempts.

Zerachande was firing his shoulder cannon at the xenomorphs at their rear, he turned to see Swayande getting attacked. Rouyeyin swiped at the front Runner with his extended wrist blades, slicing off its head. Its companion leaped at Rouyeyin, but the young yautja uppercut the beast with his right hook impaling its head with his wrist blades. He elbows another Runner in the head before slicing into it.

Zerachande growls at Rouyeyin before tossing him a speargun, Rouyeyin catches it before aiming it at the warrior xenomorphs. The xenomorphs are quickly pinned to the walls, floor, and ceiling. Rouyeyin growls at Tass-dhou-ti to help him lift Swayande up. Zerachande taps at his wrist computer as a hologram of an escape route is charted. The honorable Zerachande growls to his clanmates, “Fall back” drool drips down from the ceiling.

“Above you!” Valerie shouts to the leader of the yautja. Valerie crawls to her feet as a Runner jumps down from the hole in the ceiling. Valerie pushes Zerachande out of the way while the Runner lands on her instead. The Runner claws into Valerie's shoulder as its feet land on to her back, Valerie grunts as the Runner distributes its weight on her. The Runner full of rage attempts to headbite Valerie but halts once it takes in her synthetic scent. Zerachande slices the Runner’s head off with a stroke of his glaive. The runner’s headless body collapses on Valerie.

Zerachande kicks the runner’s body off of the synthetic woman, he picks her up before he motions his hunting party to move out. Zerachande took point to lead his clan to their destination as he occasionally would fire Valerie's M41Pulse Rifle at any kainde amedha that strays into their path. Valerie looked over Zerachande’s shoulder as he was following the holographic map on his wrist computer. It was the layout of the facility, she recognized the hangar bay area was nearby. “Go there” she points at the map, “Ship” she moves her hand like a flying craft. Zerachande glances at her then back at his clanmates. They make a sudden turn as they head towards the flight control center.

CHAPTER 13: THE INFECTION MUST DIE!

The yautja enter the flight control center, Zerachande allows Valerie to leave his shoulder. He gestures to her to do her thing. “Honorable Zerachande, why did you bring an meca-ooman with us?” Zhou-di, one of the females asked.

“We are going to use her to set up a signal for our mother's clanship to find, we will use this machine to return home” he crosses his arms as he watches Valerie switching on the necessary systems from the backup-power systems to the communication’s dedicated power grid. Once all the instruments were all online, Valerie nodded to Zerachande. Zerachande ****ed his head confused at her gesture, she makes a motion of talking while moving her hands like an aircraft. Zerachande then returns the nodded gesture as he makes his way to the communicator to set up the signal.

The Praetorian senses her Queen’s mind touching her own, she understood. The praetorian hisses to her lower caste sisters to fall back to her. The praetorian follows the trail of bodies left behind by the yautja, light glowing green blood and dull white blood sprinkled all over the floor.

Meanwhile, above planet Nagaigo. A yautja clanship warps into orbit. It slowly descends to the planet's surface. The clanship hovers above the colony of Scott Town, leaving a massive shadow upon the ground. A smaller shuttlecraft departs from the mother clanship as it lands in the starport. The laughing skull clan yautja roar with excitement, they wait for Zerachande’s signal. He gestured to his clanmates to go through the window. The yautja smashed through the window as they made their way down into the starport. Zerachande turns his attention back to Valerie, he tosses the M41A Pulse Rifle back to her before departing through the window.

Valerie checks the ammo counter “00” and looks back at the fleeing Yautja. “Figures, they leave me high and dry” she shakes her in disappointment. The door behind her starts to break and bend behind her. “I have a bad feeling about this” Valerie then jumps out of the window too. She slides down the ceramic slopes. Before rolling onto the pavement, she looks up and sees the yautja mothership was in the midst of departing. The mothership’s engines burn a bright blue before escaping the atmosphere.

Valerie turned her gaze back to the control center pit. The praetorian bursts through the doors, she hisses when she discovers the flight control center was empty. Valerie looking up at the praetorian fills her with mixed terror and anger, she grits her teeth before spotting her starcraft. A sense of relief floods Valerie’s brain as she bolts towards The Videl. She opens the cage canopy as she climbs in and dons her space helmet. She flips on the switches as she powers up her spacecraft. The Praetorian hisses at her from her vantage.

Valerie revs her ship’s engines as she gains lift off. She accidentally thumbs on her radio comm. “Please help us, the xenomorphs are going to overrun the medbay. If anyone is out there please save us!” Valerie closes her eyes as she ponders her next move. She returns to the starport. She quickly replaces the empty clip with a full one, the ammo indicator displays ‘00’ which updates to “99” after the reload. She punches in the commands to her canopy to open. Valerie leaps out of her spaceship’s ****pit. A lone runner digging into a trash bin stops to look up at Valerie. She aims for the Runner’s neck before firing a few shots into it, the Runner falls on to the ground dead. She glances over to the facilities main doors, she glances up at the control center as xenomorph warriors begin crawling down from the windows.

Valerie bolted towards the doors, before the xenomorphs could reach her. Valerie couldn’t believe it took her this long to become acclimated to her synthetic body, she could run faster than her original body, she is alot stronger than she would be if she were still biological. Her synthetic muscle memory was astonishing, she impressed herself. She spotted ARMORY plastered on the wall, the armory door was left open. She examines the room quickly to see hangin on the racks are Pulse Rifles, Shotguns, Flamethrowers, Standard Pistols, an old beat up smartgun locked in a caged cabinet, boxes of ammo and a roll of duct tape. Valerie wiggles her eyebrows in excitement at the sight of the smartgun but frowns seeing the lock was a deadbolt. She grabs the duct tape as she tapes together the flamethrower and Pulse Rifle. She grabs a second M41A pulse rifle just in case.

When she leaves the armory a xenomorph breaks out of the ceiling, Valerie shoots it up full of holes before continuing down the corridor. “89” her ammo indicator updates. She quickly glances over at the side walls to check on her progress, MEDBAY plastered on a giant red arrow.

“I’m getting close” she spots a pack of xenomorphs clawing at the medbay doors. Valerie aims her gun as she runs and shoots at the beasts. “84” tango down, “75” the ammo indicator updates, “63” “51” “46” “38” “25” “17” eight xenomorphs now lay dead in front of the medbay. Valerie walked up to the heavily damaged reinforced doors, “They stopped attacking?” Valerie heard someone whisper behind the reinforced door. Valerie lightly knocks on the door, “**** they are back! Everyone remain quiet, please” the whispering voice was male but was high in pitch, very nasally and british.

“The xenos are dead,” Valerie whispered, “I have a ship, the coast is clear”

“No, you can’t be real, everyone here barely made it out alive. Go away” the nasally voice whispered back

“Hey don’t be an ass, she came to help us. You have weapons, right?” came a gruff male voice.

“Uh Yeah” Valerie answered back,

“Okay Paul, open the door”

“What are you mad, if I open the door we all die!”

“Paul for **** sake open the goddamn door, I rather die on my feet as man than starve to death like a coward”

“Ah bloody hell, if you want to die out there then be my guest” Paul opens the door. He was a skinny man with bad posture. He wore glasses and had a large forehead. The other man was a big burly man with a crew cut blonde hair and a square jaw. Both men were dressed in blue maintenance attire. Behind them were the remaining civilians and two teenage nagaians.

“So that's the voice behind the door, you look barely old enough to start college, kid” The burly man chuckled.

Valerie smiled at him softly before handing him the spare pulse rifle, “Yeah I get that alot”

“My mama told me to never look a gifted horse in the mouth, the name is Bjorn” he grabs a spare clip from her as he loads the clip into the locking chamber “99”

“Hey were coming too” Akae walks up to Valerie and the big guy Bjorn, following her was Takashin. The rest of the remaining civilians began walking out of medbay, leaving Paul behind.

“What? You can’t leave me behind, can you?” Paul power walked up to Valerie, “Listen here girl, you can’t just walk up in here like you bloody darn feel like it and demand these good people and the two nagaians to their death” Akae and Takashin exchange glances at each other as Paul rambles.

“Okay, now you listen to me. What good would it do with everyone locked up in medbay, your only two options with that was to either starve or…” she gave him a hard look, “They eventually break in” she smiled grimly.

“Do you know what the xenomorphs do to you once they get you? They sting you with their stinger, you begin to feel numb as its venom paralyzes you. Then they carry you back to their hive. It's dark in the hive, pitch black because of the resin they secrete” Valerie turns her back on Paul, “They wrap you in a cocoon, made of resin. They plant an egg in front of you, once it hatches… the thing that comes out of it. You will feel suffocation while it slides its nasty proboscis down your throat and that is not even the worse part. Next is the birth, you die from it. A tiny xenomorph will erupt from your chest! Do you want that?!” Valerie turns to stare directly into his eyes.

“N-no” Paul resigned. Valerie smiled sincerely, thinking she got through to him. Paul quickly glanced at her shoulder, she was bleeding white. “W..wait a minute. Hold up Girl, you expect me to buy that story? You talk as if you've been there and experienced all of it, but why should I believe a synthetic! A blood goddamn robot for christ sakes! For all we know, you could have been planted here by the company!” Paul then looked at her with determination and seething hatred. “Yes, that is it isn’t it?” Paul started shaking his head.

“What is what?” an overweight engineer asked.

“Company sent her here, she must have brought the xenomorphs here” Paul conjectured.

“Now that you mentioned it, there was a rumor being spread in administration. Saying a cargo vessel crashed landed nearby” the overweight man spitted out his words from his heavy lips.

“Yes, all too convenient that she has a bloody working ship” Paul nodded his head.

“The snuggems were knocked down by an alien ship, not mine! Don’t believe check the black box. Also I’m human, not a ****ing robot!” Valerie sneered.

“You think of yourself as human, I see white blood” Paul walks up to Valerie and digs his fingers into her wound, Valerie flinches from the simulated pain receptors that stimulate her natural pain responders in her brain. He shows off her white blood, “You can’t fool me by simulating pain, robot!”

“Grrr damn *******! If I really were a corporate bot, why would I lend you weapons or hell lead you to the armory if I wanted you to get you killed? I could have let the xenomorphs do it for me, also my wound, take a look at it!” she points at her arm wound as she shows everyone, “That's not a knife wound, that's a xenomorph claw wound. My brain is human, my body is a synthetic-based prosthetic body. The reason why I know so much about them is because I experienced it first hand. They know I am human because they can sense it. Xenomorphs don’t attack Synthetics unless provoked….” Valerie's eyes widen as she turns her head, “They are here!”

Valerie takes charge as she walks down the corridor leading to the armory, she turns around and sees the group hasn’t even budgeted, “Come on! Why aren’t y'all running? Guns and ammo down this way!” The group began to move when they heard the screeches of a praetorian emerging on the opposite side of the corridor.

Once at the armory they grabbed all that they could of the available weapons before heading off to the starport. Several xenomorphs awaken from the commotion brought on by the remaining colonists. Valerie and the colonists quickly gun down any xenomorph stupid enough to approach them. “Get to the ships, people,” Valerie demanded.

“Wait, this installation costs trillions of dollars, we can’t just abandon Scott Town!” Paul reminds her.

“I hate to agree with these humans but he is right, what about my home?” Takashin finally spoke.

“What alternatives do you have?” Valerie retorted.

“Can’t we just target the xenomorph’s queen and be done with this nightmare?” asked a random colonist.

“Problem is where am I going to find a xenomorph queen….” Valerie then remembered the Snuggems were the source of the outbreak. “No it's too dangerous, we will never pull it off besides I can’t ask you to enter a xenomorph hive with me when I don’t even want to go. Let’s just take off, we get the colonel marines to nuke the snuggems from orbit” Valerie cried.

“So the badass company cyborg is afraid of a couple of giant bugs? Huh? You were so confident just about an hour ago where did all of that confidence and bravado go, Miss Robot?” Paul overemphasized on the T to Robot.

“I’m not going back into another hive, I won’t…. I died in one...came back as a machine.. You can’t make me!” Valerie started ranting to herself.

“Oh how did you die exactly, miss robot? Oh yes, a chestburster? Heard it was very painful, how did it feel squirming in your insides chewing away at your lungs?”

“Hey Paul, give her a break”

“No, if she managed to get a prosthetic body that means she is high on the corporate ladder? Did mum and dad pay for that new body of yours? Only someone filthy rich could afford one of thoses”

“Hey *******, knock it off!”

“Ah go blow a wank, ya wanker!” Paul curses, he turns back to Valerie. “Okay now then where was I…” Paul is immediately lifted into the air, “Noooooo!!!! You vicious *****!” he screams.

Everyone looked up at Paul’s captor, it had large leathery wings on a basic xenomorph drone body frame but its head was most peculiar. It possessed the wing-horns of a nagaian. Akae and Takashin stare off in horror to see the monsters now taking nagaian form.

CHAPTER 14: THE HIVE

The Xenomorph Gargoyle flies past the starport crane as it turns to look down upon the starport as the prey stare up at it. The prey struggles within its grasps, the Gargoyle peels back its lips baring its silvery teeth. It opens its jaws wide, Paul could feel the saliva dripping on the back of his head.
“Don’t just bloody stand there, save me you worthless husk of bloody ****ing plastic!” screamed Paul.

The Xenomorph Gargoyle fires its inner jaws into the back of his skull through his mouth. Blood comes gushing from his mouth as the gargoyle retracts its innerjaws. The gargoyle releases Paul's lifeless body, gravity pulls his corpse back to the ground. Bjorn aims his pulse rifle up in the air, he waits for the gargoyle to get closer. “94” his rules rifle ammo indicator updates itself as the caseless bullets tear off the gargoyle’s wing. The gargoyle collides into the Lancaster luxury shuttle, grey carapace and yellow acid blood splatters all over the civilian shuttle. The acid eats through the ship rendering it, compromising the hull of the ship.

“It’s blood eats its surroundings, just like the others, what are these beasts?” Akae asked.

“Species XX121 aka Xenomorphs,” Anna Williams, a woman with short brown sci-fi bob hair dressed in a white lab attire. “The xenomorphs are many things, a parasitic lifeform during their larval stages, a vicious killing machine when they are adults. Their parasitic young incorporate the DNA of their hosts. Species XX121, are very fascinating creatures. We were scheduled for a shipment containing specimens for the labs at Peak-79 however as you can see the specimens have escaped containment”

Both nagaian eyes widened in horror, before they could ask any questions. Valerie power walked over to Anna Williams. Her fists clenched, the expression on her face made her intentions clear of what she thinks of the scientist.

“Wait, wait, you knew they were on that ship? And didn’t warn the colony!” Valerie clenched her teeth before landing a slap across Dr. Williams’s face, “That was for the crew of the snuggems! This is for the colonist” she clenches her fist.

Bjorn grabs Valerie’s arm. “That is enough,”

“Just why did you bring them? Did you learn nothing about what happened on earth decades ago?” Valerie continued.

“We brought them because of what happened on earth. We were going to study them, learn about their weaknesses, and ultimately how to kill them”

“What a load of bull, that ship had already sailed! Bionational, Weyland-Yutani and Medicorp have already tried”

“There still plenty of room for research, beyond orbital bombardment, our current war technologies are barely effective against them. Innovating technology is always a Work in Progress. Besides, if we were able to study Species XX121 sooner than perhaps the infestation on earth could have been avoided!”

Valerie hangs her head low, “Yeah whatever, so did your research churn up anything useful?”

“Nothing yet,” Anna replies.

Valerie sighs in frustration.

“There is always the Berserker strategy: Kill the Queen, you cripple the hive” Anna added.

“You humans keep mentioning a queen. Do the beasts have a chieftain of somesorts?” Takashin asked.

“The Xenomorph Queen is an egglayer, she maintains absolute control over her entire brood. The Queens can lay hundreds of eggs, that is one egg per person. If we take out the queen, the xenomorphs will become directionless” Anna said matter-of-factly.

“Is it possible for a hive to have more than one queen?” Valerie asked.
“Yes, if the hive is big enough. A praetorian will molt from the eldest of the queen’s royal warriors” Anna replied.

“And what do praetorians look like?” Valerie asked. Thinking back on the large xenomorph she encountered earlier.

“They are the transition between subordinate and ruler. Body of your common variety xeno with the crest of a royal breed...” Anna looked up as she heard a loud bang. Valerie turns her back to the double doors as they begin to bulge.

“More of the monsters!” Akae growls.

The double doors burst open as a very tall creature squeezes itself through the door frame. Its head initially resembles the cigar-shaped heads of the warriors but widens at the back into a flat crest.

“What in all of creation is that thing?” asked one of the civilians.

“Is that a praetorian?” Takashin asked.

“Oh indeed it is,” Anna smiled.

The praetorian came with some guests, a few warriors and drones. Valerie was observing her surroundings, she spotted the crane lift. She looks back at the hostile creatures, that sense of dread she felt all those years keep creeping back to her. She shook her head, No not this time she thought to herself, “Hey I got a plan! Keep the smaller ones off my back”

“What do you have in mind? Ms?” Bjorn asked.

“My name is Valerie, Valerie Armstrong” she answered.

“Bjorn Erickson” the big replied, “Don’t be gone too long, Ms. Armstrong”

She nods as she bolts for the crane lift, the “smaller” xenomorphs quickly break away from the bigger one. Bjorn and those who are carrying a weapon begin opening up fire on the charging drones and warriors. The praetorian charges in with her near-flat head, she grabs one of the civilians with her claws. She clattered her teeth to scare away any humans from thinking of rescuing the captured. The praetorian then spots Valerie climbing up the crane’s ladder. The praetorian hisses to the remaining warriors to go after the fleeing girl. The armed colonists take cover from the attacking xenos, occasionally peeking out of cover to squeeze a few rounds into the biomechanical monsters.

“We got to keep these bastards away from Valerie!” Bjorn fires a shotgun into a smooth headed drone, blowing off its jaws then arm.

The ladder vibrated violently, Valerie held on to the ladder for dear life till the vibrations stopped. Only to be replaced with the clinking and clanking of claws against metal. Valerie glances down to see a xenomorph warrior climbing up the ladder. Valerie hastens her rate of climb as the warrior gains on her. Valerie makes it to the top, she reaches for the electronic door. The warrior grabs her by the wrist and tries to pull her down to the floor, Valerie swings around her M41A Pulse Rifle.

“Eat this!” She unloads half a clip into the warrior, bits and pieces of its carapace fly off its frame. The warrior releases Valerie as it stumbles over the ledge, Valerie quickly makes it back to the electronic door. The warrior in an act of defiance impales Valerie with its tail, the sharp stinger burrows through her synthetic body’s abdominal region. Fatal to an organic but not to a synthetic. Valerie continued to enter the cabin of the crane, she ****s the electronic door on the warrior’s tail. The warrior hisses sporadically as it falls to its death.

Valerie operates the crane, she orders the electromagnet to pick up the damaged Lancaster luxury shuttle. She nudges the crane to hover the damaged spacecraft above the praetorian. Valerie releases the shuttle from her magnet, the Landcaster comes crashing down on top of the Praetorian. Crushing its back, limbs, and tail; leaving its head unscathed. It fruitlessly thrashes its inner jaws at the prey, before suc***bing to its wounds.

“Okay, Bjorn. We should evacuate the remaining civilians. Make sure everyone gets onboard that old Dropship” Valerie spoke through the cabin’s microphone. Which allowed her to broadcast her voice to the speakers.
Bjorn nodded as he led the civilians in the old dropship. Valerie opened the electronic door as she stepped out, she gazed across the horizon to see a flock of giant birds come their way. She squints her synthetic eyes to zoom in closer, they weren’t birds.

Valerie double timed down the ladder, the metal of the ladder burned against her synthetic skin. She lands on her feet before turning around to the ships. The dropship was getting ready to lift off, Valerie bolted towards the dropship. “Bjorn, I’m going to need your help” she walks over to him.

“With what?” he asked.

“Setting the Snuggems to self detonate,”

“Wait, I thought you didn’t want to go anywhere near that ship?”

“It's true, I don’t want to go back to that place… but there is a flock of flying xenomorphs heading to our location. We must take out the queen, otherwise we lose another world to them” Valerie then glances over at takashin and takae, “They will lose their only world...to them”

Bjorn looks over at the pilot, he nods for the pilots to take over as he walks up to Valerie. “I will help you, Ms. Armstrong” he reloads his Pulse Rifle, “Lead the way” The sounds of spacecraft engines roar as another luxury starcraft leaves the starport.

“Wait, who left?” Valerie asked.

“Anna Williams, the researcher,” Bjorn replied.
“What is she doing?” Valerie bolts out of the dropship as Bjorn follows her.

“Forget about her, we have bigger fish to fry” Bjorn points at the incoming flying xeno swarm.

“My ship, let's go!” Valerie ordered.

The Dropship retracts its ramp as it becomes airborne. It tucks in its landing gears before taking off into orbit while Bjorn and Valerie bolt towards the Videl. Valerie quickly dons her helmet before punching in the buttons and flipping the switches to get her spacecraft airbourne. The Videl lifts off. Valerie directs the Videl over the colony Scott Town. Xenomorphs everywhere, they all look up and stare as the Videl soars above them.

The xenomorphs on the ground disengage with their previous actions as they all slowly begin to follow the Videl. The xenomorphs in the air quickly turn their flock towards the Videl. “Looks like we got their attention” Bjorn observed.

“Yeah, looks like it,” Valerie agrees. A xenomorph gargoyle zooms past her fuselage, was it ignoring her? In the distance they saw a familiar ship landed on top of the snuggems.

“Wait, isn't that Ms. William’s ship?” Bjorn asks.

“Oh boy,” Valerie sighed. An electrical sensation courses through her head, she is drawing closer to the hive. She briefly hallucinates the queen’s visage peering through her ****pit. Valerie tries to ignore it, which only angers the hallucination. Then the hallucination disappears abruptly. Valerie carefully lands her craft on top of the snuggems.

Locale: Planet Nagaigo, USCSS Snuggem, Hive Interior.

Anna Williams was taken by the xenomorph drones to be cocooned, they placed an egg near her. Anna takes a deep breath as she bites into the medicine cap in her back tooth. “What that synthetic ***** doesn’t know, I have a contingency plan for everything. Including using myself as an incubator, Mr. Mishima.. I mean the Weyland-Yutani Corporation will have to give me a promotion after this…” She smiled mischievously, “I sure hope this works” she began to doubt herself. The egg peels open, Anna takes another deep breath as the facehugger screams on its way out of the egg.

Valerie and Bjorn slowly made their way into the upper deck of the starship. They slowly made their way down to the middle deck. Valerie would constantly ever so often look around frantically.

“What's the matter?” Bjorn was worried about his companion’s mental state.

“I don’t know but sometimes I get these episodes where I feel their presence…” Valerie attempts to explain.

“You feel them? How?” Bjorn asked with doubt in his voice.

“I don’t know? It's not often either, it's like a sixth sense but it doesn’t always work..” Valerie explained, “There” she points, “Hide!” Bjorn’s doubts quickly vanished as a pack of five warriors were crawling on the ceiling.

“We got one more level, then we will reach the reactor” Bjorn reassures Valerie as she starts to enter another episode. “Valerie?”

Valerie tries to suppress her hallucinations, she then hears Bjorn’s voice. “I’m alright, lets go” she nodded her head.

They reached the reactor core after an hour of making d-tours to avoid company, the coolant controls were typical of those found on M-Class Star Freighters. Valerie collapses herself on the coolant system, she lifts herself up as she concentrates to not allow the hallucinations to stop her from completing her task. One by One, She pulls out the four metal handles then screws them each into place. She pulls the handles up then flips the inside switches from green to red. Coolant was now being pulled from the active reactor.

“DANGER, THE EMERGENCY DESTRUCT SEQUENCE HAS NOW BEEN ACTIVATED. THE SHIP WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN T-MINUS, TEN MINUTES. THE OPTION TO OVERRIDE AUTOMATIC DETONATION WILL EXPIRE IN T-MINUS, FIVE MINUTES” the ship’s onboard MUTHUR mainframe announced.

The xenomorph queen arose her massive head, she peels back her thin lips barring her sword-like teeth. Spit and drool ran down from her jaws, her children quickly began their trek through the ship. Meanwhile the medicine Anna took wakes her up to the self destruct alarm. She glances at the dead facehugger now laying dead on the floor, she flexes her arm muscle, her life-like synthetic hand disconnects from her amputee stump. The hand moves on its own before reconnecting back to the stump. A blade emerged from her synthetic hand’s wrist, which she uses to cut herself free from the resin. A lone xenomorph worker crawls over to Anna, she quickly sprays herself with xeno-perfume to mask her human scent. The worker sticks out its long pink tongue before resuming its daily chores. Anna sneaks her way through the corridors.

Valerie and Bjorn run past Anna’s position, missing the shortcut to the outside. Anna seizes her opportunity to escape through the shortcut, she runs into a xenomorph warrior. The warrior extended its inner jaws before retracting them, the perfume tricks its sense of smell. Anna was free to leave the Snuggems. Valerie and Bjorn turn around when they hear a hiss coming from the door they passed earlier.
“THE OPTION TO OVERRIDE AUTOMATIC DETONATION WILL EXPIRE IN T-MINUS, THREE MINUTES”

Valerie burns the xenomorph with her flamethrower, the other xenomorphs soon converge on their location. Bjorn and Valerie blast away the oncoming xenomorphs now surrounding the shortcut. “87” Valerie’s ammo indicator updates. “81” Bjorn’s ammo indicator updates. Valerie glanced at her flamethrower fuel gauge, “78%”

More xenomorphs hiss in the distances, Bjorn and Valerie make it to the shortcut door. Taking the maintenance tunnel directly to the outside of the Snuggem’s hull. Valerie climbs first up the ladder, while Bjorn follows suit. Mid climb, a sharp hiss filled the maintenance tunnel, Bjorn looks down and sees a xenomorph beginning to climb up the ladder. “Climb faster!” he shouts to Valerie.

“****! ****!” Valerie curses as she increases her rate of climbing. Bjorn followed a step behind her. The xenomorph is about twentyseven steps behind the both of them. “THE SHIP WILL AUTOMATICALLY DESTRUCT IN T-MINUS FIVE MINUTES”

Meanwhile Anna Williams runs over to her ship, she trips as she clutches her chest feeling the neonate chestburster moving around in her chest. A xenomorph gargoyle lands on the snuggem’s exterior. It spots Anna Williams, her xeno-perfume is starting to wear off. The xenomorph approaches Anna but hesitates once it senses the chestburster growing within her. Anna’s escape ship opens its bay doors, deploying a ramp down. A Large synthetic comes walking down the ramp. He carries a massive caliber of sniper rifle.

He targets the nagaian spawned xeno, “Hasta la vista, baby!” The moment he pulls the trigger, the gargoyle’s head comes apart like a popped balloon as the gargoyle is thrown from the Snuggems. He holsters his rifle on his back while he carefully retrieves Anna to bring her back to the ship.

Anna looks up at her personal synthetic bodyguard, “JACK…” she starts coughing. The Synthetic places her in the cryostasis pod, before administering her a blue-gelatinous serum. JACK turns around to secure the bay doors. “Williams, Anna. Is Secured”

“Good, proceed with extraction” the computer spoke. JACK walks to the flight controls. He sits down while he operates the control. He spots in the video feeds, two survivors fleeing the maintenance shaft. “Witnesses. Shall I terminate?” JACK asks the computer.

“You don’t have time, proceed with extraction as ordered” the computer transmitted.

“Yes, Master Mishima” JACK complied. He revs up the ship’s engines before taking off into the air. JACK’s afterburners are all that Bjorn and Valerie see from the fleeing spacecraft.

Valerie and Bjorn run over to the Videl, from the sky a Gargoyle breaks away from her flock as she dives bombs the Snuggems. Valerie and Bjorn both shoot the Gargoyle out of the sky, the xenomorph falls to the snuggems dead on arrival. Her wounds bleed on to the ship’s hull melting through the decks like a hot knife through butter. The xenomorph on the ground quickly swarms the snuggem, climbing up its hulls like massive ants. “YOU NOW HAVE ONE MINUTE TO ABANDON SNUGGEMS… THE SNUGGEMS WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN T-MINUS ONE MINUTE”

Bjorn hops into the Videl first, Valerie seats herself second. She puts on her helmet. Punching in buttons and flipping switches, the instruments to the Videl sing their electronic tunes. Valerie revs her ship’s engines, a lone xenomorph drone leaps on to the Videl as she takes off the Snuggems as she becomes airborne.

The gargoyle flock swarms towards the Videl. The drone attempts to smash its head into the ****pit but Videl accelerates the starcraft causing the drone to lose its footing as it slides off the fuselage onto the Videl’s wing. The xenomorph climbs on the twin engine booster, in its desperation to reach the fuselage. The xenomorph leaps off the booster engines however as the ship is in acceleration, the booster engines end up frying the drone.

The Snuggems engine room engine emits a light, a light that engulfs the queen’s chamber, then the entire ship. The Snuggems explode into a massive dome of light before evolving into a dark mushroom cloud. With the queen’s death, the gargoyles are thrown into a state of shock as they plummet into the burning inferno below.

CHAPTER 15: THE BAD BLOOD

Date: December 1st, 2230

Locale: Cerberus Station, Planet Julianos.

Sarachande slowly awakes to people screaming before they are suddenly silenced. The young blood yautja slowly awakens to find himself strapped to a stretcher. He briefly looks down to see a stitched incision on his chest. He hears the hisses of the kainde amedha from the hallways, causing him to look up at the glass wall. Their silhouette of their iconic forms casted a shadow upon the wall. Banana-shaped head with tusked protrusions flaring out from its jaws, a series of four dorsal tubes and a single large dorsal spike on its bipedal form with a long tail. The xenomorph was tugged back as angry yautja voices filled the air. Silhouettes of Yautja materialized on the walls as they yank the spiked chains on their xenomorph hounds.

Sarachande’s door slides open, the tusked xenomorphs crawl into view. Around their neck was a metal collar, attached to the collar was a spiked chain leading back to their master’s clutches. Four yautja came into view of the door as they tapped on the controls of their wrist computers, an electric shock was applied through the tusked xenomorphs’ collars to shock them into obedience. Each yautja had a unique biomask, one carried a mask reminiscent of the Hawk, another reminiscent of a Boar, the handler wore a mask resembling a xenomorph’s face, and their leader wore a mask made from the remains of a xenomorph queen’s crown. 

“Elder Zerri’atchi” Sarachande bowed his head. 

Zerri’atchi pulled out his ceremonial knife, he slashes away at the straps restraining Sarachande. “Sarachande, my son’s most intelligent pupil” he shakes Sarachande's shoulder.

“I’ve heard you have joined one of the bad blood clans” Sarachande thoughtlessly mentioned before bowing on his hands and knees to the elder. “Forgive me, elder”

“Hehehe, indeed” Zerri’atchi chuckles, “Do you wish to join the Black Death Clan, Sarachande? Learn to control the kainde amedha? Control the abomination that once was feeding from your blood?” he offered.

“Yes, elder. The kainde amedha, I always wished to harness the power of those beasts. See you here, brings me great joy, elder. I wish to join your clan, great elder!” Sarachande bows his head lower.

“Rise, clanbrother. Your task is to tame the abomination the oomans have cutted out of your chest’ Zerri’atchi ordered.

“Yes, great one,” Sarachande acknowledged.

“Good,” He taps at his wrist computer, “Clan leader, K’cha-tak. We have found your son, how shall we proceed?”

“Good, make sure the young blood gets his kainde amedha abomination. We depart to the planet that the oomans call Nekket” K’cha-tak answered back.

Date: December 2nd, 2230

Locale: Planet Nekket, Weyland-Yutani Xenoarchaeological studies facility

Biomasks of varying degrees of design and conditions, dott the room. Excavated spears, blades, plasma castors, and other devices lay broken and corroded on a large table. Chief xenoarchaeologist Jun Kazama picks up an ancient wrist computer. She brings it over to her workstation to clean it with alcohol, washcloth and a flathead screwdriver. After some thorough cleaning, Jun began rewiring the computer’s internals. It surprises her how similar they are to human technology. The wrist computer flashes several symbols, Jun had studied the yautja cladograms for her entire adult life. 

Her phone begins ringing, she sees the face of her daughter Asuka on the vid-phone. “Hello Asuka,” Jun answered.

“Mom, when are you coming home?” Asuka asked.

“I’m… working late tonight” Jun replied

“Really? Was it an important find?” Asuka asked curiously.

“Yes,” Jun turned around in her seat, she glanced over the many tables covered in yautja excavated artifacts. “I’ll call you back later”

Nekket’s moon hangs in the sky, the moonlight is interrupted by a wavy shimmer. A red tridot beam scouts the massive rectangular building resting on a cliff slide, it seeps through the window. The Yautja targets Jun Kazama, the xenoarcheologist spots the three red dots on her arm. 

Instinctually she looks up, a flash lights the darkness of a humanoid standing atop of a hill. Then the background fades to darkness as a flying blue ball of light barrels closer to the facility. The plasma fire explodes the glass sending the xenoarchaeologist flying across the room. The yautja raises his fist in the air declaring his victory.

The following morning Jun woke up covered in rubble and broken weapons. A yautja ceremonial knife sticks out of her leg. A shimmer stands above her, it deploys its wrists blades. The yautja scans the woman, with its multi viewer modes. It registers a fair amount of yautja blood in her system. It retracts its wrists blades. It reaches over to its wrist computer to uncloak himself, his mask was made from an Engineer’s flight mask. The other members of his clan began to uncloak each one sporting a different biomask all bearing scratched out marks of their clan’s symbols.

Jun feels being picked up as she is placed on a stretcher, the engineer masked Yautja places a rebreather over Jun’s mouth. The bird-like mask yautja growls as his mechanical falcon spots an intruder. A young woman riding a bike, dressed in Namco University Uniform. Asuka was listening to her tunes as she went to visit her mother’s place of work.

The falconer turns to his leader, a massive yautja with blood red skin and a pair of curved horns forged onto his standard yautja biomask. “Clan Leader, K’cha-tak. An oomen approaches us” the Falconer reports. 

“Let it come,” K’cha-tak turns to his scientist, the engineer masked yautja, “Sarachande, what did you find on this female?”  

“The female oomen has yautja blood in her system,” Sarachande explained, “After raiding the databases on that oomen station, I discovered a group of oomans that drank the blood of yautja. Our blood can extend their lifespan three times over, we can learn more from further studying of this female”

“Interesting, but steady your scalpels. I want this ooman alive, my son. I know you thirst for ooman blood, breaking you out of that ooman starstation wasn’t easy. Patience my boy,” he shakes his son’s shoulder.

Asuka arrives at the facility on her bike, she spots the glass on the main facility building’s window shattered. She then rode her bike to the parking lot resting along the ravine’s edge, where she saw her mother tied down on a bed grasped by several metal claws. “Mom!” Asuka shouts, unaware of the cloaked alien hunters. She slows down her bike before throwing it down on the pavement as she runs up to her mother. 

Sarachande was still in hemovision, when he scans the girl had no Yautja blood in her system. Asuka notices a breathing mask over her mother’s face, she tries to pull it off but she is grabbed by an invisible hand. She is thrown in the air but Asuka being well trained in the martial arts, allowed her to land safely on the ground. She assumes an attack position, her soft oval dark eyes dart around to see what grabbed her. “Who...what?” Her eyes widened when the alien hunters began materializing in front of her.  

Asuka clenched her teeth as she raised her fists, “You...*******S!” she throws a punch into the tall one. She repeatedly punches the yautja in the abs, she then swings and kicks him in the legs and arms before attempting to kick him in the groin area. K’cha-tak stumbles backwards after getting kicked in the privates. The bad blood clan leader began to laugh.

“I like this little female ooman, she has the warrior’s spirit, don't you think sarachande?” K’cha-tak glanced at his son. Asuka attempts to strike at K’cha-tak biomask, “Kekekek, This ooman is fearless, but this charade must end” he back hands Asuka across the face, sending her twirling backwards before kneeing her in the stomach. She falls to the pavement. He grabs her by the back of the head, he lifts her up. Asuka screams as the alien hunter applied pressure to her skull. She tries to kick the alien hunter but he doesn’t budge, K’cha-tak removes his biomask. He clicks his bare mandibles, his red deep eyes studying her face expressions. 

“Anata wa ichi no minikui, mazafakkadesu!” Asuka's eyes widened in fear as she cursed in japanese.

He flares his mandibles letting out a guttural roar before tossing the girl down the steep ravine. “Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!” Asuka screams as she plummets to her demise, K’cha-tak opens his hand as Sarachande hands him a speargun. He aims the speargun at her chest but the wind moves the speartip to pierce through her abdomen instead. The spear tip exits her body cleanly as it sticks to the cliff wall as the young woman continues to fall into the ravine.

Asuka’s body was overwhelmed by the pain as her body plummeted into the flowing creek below. The bad blood yautja scan the ravines for any signs of their escaped prey. K’cha-tak begins laughing as he signals his fellow hunters back to the ship; They load Jun Kazama into their ship. The ship’s engines roared to life as they set the surrounding forest on fire. The yautja clanship soars into the air, K’cha-tak taps at his command console, the clanship fires a red bolt of plasma at the research facility. It explodes into balls of fire. 

Asuka’s body washes ashore on the banks of the Iron lake. Her hand twitches to life. “Sir, she is alive!” shouted a paramedic. She barely had enough strength to open her eyes, “Hey miss, don’t fall back asleep, Miss? MISS!” The paramedic attempts to keep her awake but Asuka slowly falls back into unconsciousness.

Locale: Planet Nekket, Weyland-Yutani Biotechnologies Medical Facilities

Asuka was taken to the medical wing where she was stripped of her belongings and cleaned before being transferred to the transfusion pod. Two scientists looked down on the injured girl, “Is this really necessary?” asked one of the scientists.

“It’s the higher up’s call. The late Dr. Kazama and his brother have been studying the effects of yautja on human biology for years. They gave an order to proceed with phase II”

“But this is Late Ryo Kazama’s granddaughter, not an inmate from Fury 161!”

“No double-y chromosome inmate has the optimal parameters for this experiment. Only a handful of subjects have shown greater compatibility with yautja blood and three of them are part of the Kazama clan”

“What's the point of this experiment? If it succeeds, she won’t be able to live a normal life”

“Publicly, she is already dead. Died in the fires of the xenoarchaeology labs. Whether the experiment fails or succeeds is irrelevant, it's research data all the same to our superiors.”

“That’s just cruel, man”

“Chairwoman Priscilla Vickers is a cruel *****”

 The medical synths place the naked Asuka Kazama inside the pod carefully, additional medical synths carefully insert various IV-like syringes hooked with tubes into the young woman’s flesh. The yautja blood is pumped into veins and arteries. The blood’s healing properties began repairing the damage in conjunction with the surgery on Asuka’s abdomen. The medical synths worked around the clock to ensure the kazama girl would survive the surgery. The old bishop models nods to the corporate higher ups that the surgery was successful. 

“Surgery on Asuka Kazama is a success. The Predator species’ blood is working like the late Ryo Kazama from the reports” Bishop reported.

“Good, we will conduct more tests on her when she is feeling better” Kazuya then smiled, “Phase 1 complete. We begin Phase 2, in a month. Anna write that one down”

CHAPTER 16: THE HYBRID & THE ANCESTRAL BLADE

Date: December 3rd, 2230

Locale: Weyland Yutani Xenomorph Research Facility (Former Weyland-Yutani Corrections Facility), Fiorina “Fury” 161

Several prison cells lay open, the bodies of several animals lie motionless. All of them had a massive hole in their core region. A pack of panther-spawned xenomorphs roam the former correctional facility. The panthers resemble the Runner except they are much larger and bulkier than their mesocarnivore-spawn brethren. The panthers chance up a lone Rhino-spawned xenomorph, the Rhinoalien resembled a bulkier quadrupedal version of the human-spawned xenomorphs except they lack a tail and have six pairs of dorsal tubes rather than four that bend forward rather than back. The most distinguishing characteristic is the massive two nose horns growing out of its face. The pantheraliens run up to the lone rhinoalien, they extend their secondary jaws before retracting them. The rhinoalien extends its jaws too before retracting them. The scientists watch from a safe distance from their computer monitors in an octagonal control room.

“Species XX121 are indifferent to the changes to their fellows regardless of host-origin. We tried every animal we could think of: Rhinos, Boars, Lions, Wolves, Gorillas and even some alien animals” Dr. Samuel Kadinsky stared at the monitors. He spots the Boaraliens snuggling with a lone snakealien. Mantisalien and the scorpionalien were cocooning inmates along the former cafeteria wall. The Gorillalien was accompanying the bullaliens and crabaliens. 

“Yes, the xenomorphs are fascinating creatures. Oh Dr. Kadinsky, any progress on that little pet project of yours?” Dr. Lee Caolan asked.

“You mean the K-series? Promising to say the least. How's your pet project, Caolan?” Kadinsky replied.

“The H-series project? It's doing better than your project” Caolan gloated.

With that exchange the two scientists walk out of the hexagonal room down opposite corridors. The Xenomorph Research Facility was built over what was left of the old correctional facilities. The XRF mostly towered the old decrypted prison while repurposing the main corridors for its own use. The former correctional facility was divided into four sectors. The Hub which is located directly under the XFR, the North Wing acts as a containment facility for Species XX121. The East Wing is the K-Labs, under the watchful eye of Dr. Samuel Kadinsky; who has been studying species XX121 since the Earth War. The West Wing is the X-Gen labs, its science team serving the prodigy Dr. Lee Caolan. Both the nature of either laboratories are classified. 

Dr. Kadinsky slips his keycard into the main lab door, the massive door slides open. He stops at the containment tanks harboring sleeping gold-skin xenomorphs. “Dr. Caolan can laugh at me all he wants. I show him that his H-series are inferior to my K-series” he caresses the cyrotank, “Hello beautiful,” he said to his creation.  Dr. Kadinsky walked into the adjacent room, he turned on the lights to reveal a chamber with a massive window. Beyond the glass was a massive golden xenomorph, it resembled a queen however it had yautja-like mandibles on the side of her jaws and long segmented dreadlocks. The Predalien queen hisses as she begins producing ovomorphs from her swollen oviraptor. 

Meanwhile at the X-Gen Labs, Dr. Caolan was staring at a series of cryotanks containing his genetic variant of species XX121. These xenomorphs were brown in coloration instead of the usual dark grey gunmetal coloration of the original strain. Their mesoskeleton was fleshy rather than biomechanical, their cranium is sleeker, their chin more pronounced, and their jaws more serpentine. “My H-series is the future. With Human DNA the xenomorph can be reasoned or at the very least can form an unbreakable bond” Caolan caresses his creation’s tank. The computer monitor displays the genetic composition of the xenomorph. 80% Xenomorph, 20% Human The computer registers. Caolan walked into the adjacent room, he turned on the light. The lights flicker on revealing tanks containing a puke tan vaguely xenomorph-like creature. The creature had a skull-like face on a xenomorph’s elongated head with the back end blending into the creature’s shoulder-back region. It lacked a mesoskeleton, its exterior was fleshy like that of a human, It had a pink pot belly with human genitalia. It stared at Caolan with its beady black eyes. “What a beautiful, beautiful butterfly,” he said to the creature. 40% Xenomorph, 60% Human The computer registers. 

Date: December 8th, 2230

Locale: Planet Nekket

The solar light shined through the window, the light beamed in on the open closet containing ancient samurai armor dated to the 16th century. Stylistic paintings of the great samurai Heishiro Mitsurugi hang on the wall next to his armor. Above the armor closest was a sword rack, carrying three swords. Mitsurugi’s sword favorite Shishi-oh, his old sword Korefuji, and the fable star demon sword Kai Desu-amedhasu. Next to the picture scroll painting of Mitsurugi was another painting, Mitsurugi wielding Shishi-oh against the fable star demon, a massive oni hulking of muscles with the face of a samurai crab and snakes for hair. It wore two large bracers on each forearm with a pair of claws protruding from them while wielding Kai Desu-amedhasu. Asuka Kazuma bows to her ancestor, a light incense smokes in its pedestal. She glares at the star demon painting. 

Remembering the day those beasts took her mother from her. Eyes flashing yellow, shimmering like a heat wave as they carried her Mother to their ship. Horrible face flared crab-like mandibles, red deep eyes stare back at Asuka. The creature threw down a steep ravine, Asuka felt helpless as the ledge of the road quickly escaped her view as her head shifted to the evening sky. Then came the sharp pain, her abdomen and back bursts open into a shower of blood as the speargun projectile came flying through. She felt herself being propelled further into the ravine, “Was I hit by something? Is this it? I don’t want to die!” Asuka thought to herself as she crashed into the sweeping water currents. She remembers waking up in a Weyland-Yutani owned hospital. 

“Rise and shine” Bishop said to her.

Asuka slowly woke up, unfamiliar ceiling, she turned her head towards Bishop. “Where am I?” images of the yautja kidnapping her mom appear in her head “Where’s mom?” she cried. 

The Bishop android looked at her with his unemotional eyes. “Jun Kazama is missing. The Company is doing everything they can to bring your mother back safely. Now can you tell me about your mother’s capturer” Bishop asked.

“They were invisible then they could turn uninvisible. They wore metal masks… Oh gods they were ugly when they removed them. They wanted mom for some reason, I tried to save her but I couldn’t” Asuka started breaking down in tears.

“Hmmm the predators might be interested in her blood or rather what her blood contains”

“Wait, what does that have to do anything?” Asuka looked up at Bishop.

“Because it's now in your blood as well” Bishop replied cryptically.

“What is? What did you do to me?” Asuka starts to examine herself, she notices the scarring from the IVs dotted her arms and legs.

“We used the creature’s blood to heal your wounds. They were dire, we were fortunate the alien blood aided the healing process”

“Now I have those monster’s blood in me?” Asuka cried.

Asuka snaps out remenscining as she stands up from the ground as she quickly grabs the Kai Desu-amedhasu off the sword rack. She pulls the sheath off the sword’s blade, the red metal blade shined. She twirls the blade to get the feel of it. Asuka looked down at the sword’s handle, the bottom interestingly reminded her of a chestburster’s face. 

She closes the armor closet as she kneels down in front of her late grandfather’s and her mother’s picture. “I will find you mother” she turns to her grandfather’s picture “I will avenge you, grandfather. I will kill the demons responsible” she bows before standing back up. “The demon’s blood flows through my veins… I will live twice as long as a normal human and will be stronger but what if I become a demon myself…” she thinks to herself before shaking her head, “No, I shouldn’t think of things like that”

Locale: the yautja ship, Hoshoku. 

A tall pale white female yautja slouches in her pilot chair. Upon her trophy wall, the many skulls of her exploits are shown. The massive skull of a xenomorph queen, several skulls of xenomorph warriors, a couple of human skulls, and a death angel’s skull. Youma slowly rises from her seat as she walks over to admire her skull collection. She picks up one particular human skull, she caresses the cracked skull. She places the skull on a holoprojector pedestal, the device creates a holographic image of the skull’s owner. A middle aged asian man appears, he bore the Weyland-Yutani company logo on his shoulders. It was Ryo Kazuma, Asuka’s grandfather. Youma reminicents her battle with this ooman.

It was a hot night, when she broke into the ooman’s adobe. She went in cloaked, she knew this wasn’t an ordinary hunt. Her target was a thief and an abomination, an ooman that drinks the blood of a yautja can extend their own lifespan. She’s been hunting his family like a fox since the mid-20th century, she watched them grow from a yakuza boss family to technology brokers to corporate investors. She extended her wrist blades as she approached the sleeping ooman’s room but the cries of a baby distracted the huntress. The bedroom door opens, a young woman stepped out of it walking towards the baby's room. Youma ignored the woman, she wasn’t her target. Youma quietly approached the open bedroom door, there she saw her target. Ryo Kazuma, she aims her tri-dot laser sights on his head. Ryo woke up and threw himself out of bed as the predator fired her plasma caster at his last location. The bed explodes into flames and twisted metal.

Ryo quickly dashed for his ancestor’s swords, he grabbed the Kai Desu-amedhasu off the sword rack. He unsheathed the sword, its red metallic hue caught the yautja’s eye. Her biomask scans the sword as it quickly locates the item from within her database, it was the kainde amedha slayer. Her honorable late grandfather’s sword. Youma roared furiously as it echoed through the ooman’s home. 

Ryo's eyes finally adjusted to the dark, he noticed the alien trying to kill him was different from the others. This one has a slenderer build, an hour glass frame and a pair of pronounced breasts, “You must be the female of the species that hunts me” he shoots a glance at his blood red blade, “Judging by your reaction this sword means alot to you” he swings it around to get a good feel for it. “Let’s see what you're made of?” He lunges at the yautja with sword in hand. 

Youma blocks his attack with her wrist blades. Sayori with her child watches in horror from outside of the bedroom. The baby's cries distract Youma, Ryo impales the female yautja in the hip. Youma falls to her knees when Ryo pulls her ancestor’s sword out of her. She looks up to see him sheath the blade as he tosses the sword on the floor to his mate. 

“Take it and get out of here!” Ryo shouts to his wife, she picks up the sword with baby in hand before bolting for the front door. 

Youma continues to glare at Ryo as he grabs another of his ancestor’s swords, “Muichimonji, when was the last time you tasted alien blood?” He smirked. Youma slowly reached into her waist’s pack on her belt, she pulled off a medikit syringe. She quickly stabs her wound with it, the medicine forces the wound closed. She howls in pain before discarding the syringe. Ryo swung the sword down on top of the yautja female’s head. She quickly thrusted her head up so the blade would cut into her biomask. Youma then pushed her weight forward sending the frail ooman back. Ryo collides with the armor closest before falling on his hands and knees. 

Youma grabbed the ooman by the throat as she lifted him up to eye level. With her free hand she removes her mask, Ryo wasn’t surprised by her face. Four jointed tusk-like mandibles stick out from her feminine face. “You think showing me your face is going to impress me, demon? I have seen your kind’s ugly mug plenty of times, you don’t scare me” he then grins, “Matter of fact, I pity your kind. Your life giving blood is wasted on the likes of you, it should be mine!” he struggles to reach for another sword off the sword rack.

Youma drops her mask on the floor, her brow furls as she clocks her mandibles. “Big talk… coming from a trophy!” She spoke in japanese. Ryo’s eyes widened, “How did you…” his words were cut short when Youma slams her forehead against Ryo’s. Blood trickled down his forehead, his skull was cracked. Youma pulled her head away, and the ooman’s body went limp. Youma drops the ooman on the floor before retrieving her biomask. Despite his injuries Ryo grabbed his sword off the ground and charged into Youma. The huntress gave him a swift backhanding. 

She nearly forgot, he was no ordinary ooman. The yautja blood is keeping him alive for the time being but even then it will not save him from her. Ryo charges with the Muichimonji, Youma pulls out her glaive and cuts through the ancient japanese sword like a hot knife through butter. Muichimonji's tip stabs the floor. Youma with a second stroke of her glaive, disembowels Ryo. The man stumbles back as its intestines spew on to the floor, Ryo just smiles defiantly at the yautja. Youma grabs him by the head and throws him to the floor, he makes an audible thud as Youma stared at his back. 

She shoves her clawed hands into his back, she feels around until she grabs something hard. She tugs on his spine before pulling and snapping it from the adjacent bones until it and Ryo’s skull is finally free. Youma bellows as she revels in victory.

CHAPTER 17: THE COLONIAL MARINES

Date: December 9th, 2230
Locale: Gateway Station, Earth’s Orbit.

The Conestoga class light cruisers are anchored in the Gateway Station’s shipyard. Smaller spacecrafts arrive and depart from the warships. The USS Verloc departed from the massive space station. A man dressed in military uniform watches as the two light star cruisers were heading off to their destinations. He then began organizing his men to load up the heavy dropships with ordinance. “Private Kefla, Sanchez, Pulator, Jenkins, Chadaski, Ikari, Soryu, Ayanami, Simpson, Fry, Griffin, Swanson, Tucker, Church, Caboose. Line up with the others, we begin briefing” Sergeant Jillian Shepard ordered the remainder of her men.

The colonial marines all line up in rows of fives. The marines were a mix of men and women from different ethinic backgrounds. “Officer on deck!” Sgt. Shepard barked to the grunts. “At ease. Listen up, After the recent skirmishes in the Novoya sector, the UPP has been steadily gaining worlds through the surge. Our own UA forces and the TWE forces have sent battalions to halt their expansion. The USCS Esmeralda is scheduled to transport UPP POWs to Fiorina 161. At 12:00, we depart for Fiorina 161. We will rendezvous with the USCS Esmeralda at 22:00. On our arrival, we will meet with the Esmeralda and escort her crew to the planet safely, any questions”

Private Griffin raised his hand, “Griffin, what's your question?”

“Yeah I got a couple” the overweight marine wearing glasses lowers his hand, “If we are arriving in the same system, why do we need to escort them to the planet?”

“Fiorina 161, although within TWE space borders UPP space and the frontier. Since the Fiori system is remote, it's mostly ignored however recent events has made this planet a target”

Date: December 10th, 2230
Locale: Fiori System

The USCS Esmeralda arrives at the system first before the Bayleenberg. A local neutrino blast causes the Bayleenberg’s FTL drive to suddenly shut down, pulling the warship out of hyperspace. The Bayleenberg’s mainframe ran several self repairing systems before resuming its mission to rendezvous with the Esmeralda. The Bayleenberg finally arrives at the Fiori System. It was greeted with a debris field, as twisted metal and hull fragments collided into the Bayleenberg. The ship’s mainframe performs a quick scan of the debris, the mainframe reads the data as it interprets its meaning.

The Bayleenberg’s sensors began picking up incoming vessels closing in. The IFF readings flag as two UPP Maddox Corvettes, soon the two IFFs turn into six IFFs. Four smaller crafts depart from the Maddox Corvettes, the wasp-shaped Hornet Trans-Fighters begin closing the distance between the Bayleenberg and the two corvettes. The Bayleenberg automated defense systems began targeting the smaller spacecrafts, the top and bottom dual railgun turrets began open fire at the Hornets. Quickly the small wasp-like starcrafts explode upon impact from the Bayleenberg’s lasers.

The Maddock Corvettes began firing back at the Bayleenberg with their dual 80mw particle beams. The beams connect to the Bayleenberg, fortunately the hulls of the ships held against the beams. The Bayleenberg then retaliated with both of their own bow-mounted 800MV particle beam cannons. One of the Maddocks is split in half before exploding into a ball of fire while the other Maddock barely dodges the beam. The Bayleenberg’s targeting system recalibrates for the last enemy ship, however the Maddock quickly jumps into hyperspace before it joins its comrades. Soon the mainframe awakens the Bayleenberg’s crew

The white cryogenic pods began opening, the crew slowly awakened from their pods. The mainframe blares its battle station's alarm, signalling to the marines to spring into action as they bolt towards their lockers. They dress themselves in their uniforms before making their way to the armory. They don their BDUs as they armed themselves with pistols, M41 Pulse Rifles, and those with qualifications the M56 smartguns. The Marines exit the armory as they enter the hangar bay awaiting orders from the lieutenant.

Lieutenant Arthur Allen Powell arrives in the mainframe room. “Computer, report” he orders. “USS Bayleenberg was briefly delayed in her mission to rendezvous with USCS Esmeralda. Six Union of People’s Progression vessels attacked, all but one UPP vessel were destroyed by the Bayleenberg’s defenses,” the mainframe reported.

“Let’s hope that escaped vessel doesn’t bite us in the ass later,” Powell snarks.
“One more report. Our sensors have detected a debris field in the planet's orbit. Anomaly, our sensors are not picking up the Esmeralda on any channels,” the mainframe added.

“Computer, bring up visuals on that debris,” Powell ordered.

Images of the debris field flash across the screen, the fragmented hulls were very reminiscent of the prison transport vessel. A hull fragment came into view bearing the name Esmeralda on its side. “Computer report to command, Esmeralda has been destroyed. This mission just got a whole lot more complicated,” with that the lieutenant takes his leave of the mainframe room.

“Hey where's the Lieutenant?” Callie, an asian woman of japanese descent with short black spiky hair asked impatentiley.

“Umm, sis…” Mikaela, the other woman’s twin but has her hair styled in a ponytail, tapped her impatient sister on the shoulder.

Callie turned towards her sister before spotting the lieutenant. Lt Powell glances at the twins then the other marines before making a complete stop in front of them. He makes a sharp turn, “Officer on deck!” Sergeant Shepard informs. The marines quickly stand at attention, “At ease” the lieutenant commands.

“I got some bad news. While we were asleep in cryo, we fell out of hyperspace for a while. We were attacked by UPP ships. Fortunately Bayleenberg automated defenses did their job, however in our absence the Esmeralda has been destroyed. We don’t know if there were any survivors however we will know more once we reach Fiorina 161. Any questions?” He eyes the lower ranked grunts. “Good, lock and load marines”

The marines entered the four dropships onboard the Bayleenberg, one by one the dropships were sent to the surface of Fiorina 161. The dropships plunge through the stormy clouds, to the rocky surface below. The dropships soared above the coastline where several refineries dotted the coast before hovering over a small operations settlement with a small starport near a scrapyard. Two grounded civilian transports were spotted, “Looks like some of the esmeralda's guys survived” commented Callie.
The dropships extended their landing gears as they plopped down on the remaining free landing pads. APCs are soon deployed from the bowels of the Dropships. The APCs stop once they reach the prison transports, Marines disembark from the first two APCs.

On closer inspection, the grounded dropships had signs of damage. Scratch marks, acid burns, and traces of dried human blood. “Sir, we got xenos,” said Private Fry.

“Keep your eyes peeled, marines. I don’t have to tell you how dangerous these creatures are...” Lt. Powell ordered, “****, first the UPP, then the esmeralda, now this ****” he muttered to himself.

The marines detect no movement around the two grounded dropships, “Unit 01 to Unit 04, I’m not reading anything,” said the ground team leader of unit 01.

“This is Unit 02, negative contacts” said ground team leader of unit 02

“Saddle up, embark the APCs and regroup” Lt. Powell ordered.

The two APCs regroup with the other two before heading out of the abandoned settlement. They pass a series of pipelines containing gas and other resources, they spot a trail of dead xenomorph bodies along with the bodies of UPP soldiers.

“Looks like the UPP had a tough fight,” Private Ikari commented.

“You mean, more like a massacre” PFC Soryu responded.

The APC continued down the flat dirt plains passing by a hill, three massive atmosphere processors dwarfing the APCs in the background. The APCs drive down a slope as they approach the former correctional facility’s south gate. Dead xenomorphs and UPP soldiers lie scattered around the correctional facility southern entrance with their bodies ripped open. The APC doors open up as marines disembark, “Alright marines fan out and search for survivors”

Sgt. Shepard nodded as she signals Callie, Mikaela, Jaun, Lanny, Leeroy, and Yoshi to follow her. Callie and Lanny are equipped with the M56 Smartgun; massive guns connected to a mechanical arm that is attached to its wielder’s armor harness. The other marines were equipped with standard M41A Pulse Rifles.

“Private First Class Kefla; the shy one. Hack that computer terminal” Lt. Powell orders

Mikaela walks up and hacks into the computer terminal to force the powered gates open. The marines get into position, getting ready to face whatever heads their way. Their motion tracks detect nothing other than their own movements. The courtyard was empty, no signs of any life.

“Okay, Stay Frosty” Lt. Powell barked. “What the hell? Where are the inmates, where's the guards?” Lt. Powell asked rhetorically.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Sgt. Shepard asked.

“Go ahead,” Lt. Powell allowed.

“Why are there xenomorphs here?” Sgt. Shepard asked.

“We are on the borders of the frontier, Sergeant. With their recent expansion into TWE space and their attack on our ship, I suspect the UPP had something to do with this,” Lt. Powell theorized. “All Units gather at South Gate” Lt. Powell calls for the APCs

“Sir, detecting movement…. Sir! Incoming xenomorphs encroaching on our position!” Unit 02 Squad Leader reported.

“Unit 02, disengage and get the hell outta there!”

“Yes, sir!” Unit 02’s Squad Leader affirms. As the sounds of gunfire and aliens screeching are heard over the coms. “Sir, we are heading to your position, I repeat your position”

The APCs cautiously drove around the correctional facility’s labyrinth of prefab buildings and through its claustrophobic tunnels. The tunnels were poorly lit with orange lights giving the tunnels a rusty haze color. The Marines spotted secreted resin dotting the walls, the resin was very reminiscent of the armored mesoskeletons of the xenomorphs; its sole purpose was to allow the xenomorphs to easily blend in with their environment. The APC reluctantly drove on the resin roads as they approached the Correctional Facility’s Garage. The APCs wait for Unit 02’s APC to regroup with them. On the ceiling of the garage several xenomorph warriors spring to life as the APCs awaken them from their hibernation.

CHAPTER 18: THE K-SERIES

Date: December 11th, 2230

Locale: Fiorina “Fury” 161, Correctional Facility Outskirts

As it was fleeing from a pack of angry xenomorphs Unit 02’s APC, it suddenly became airborne before crash landing on its side. The culprit was a Crusher-type Xenomorph; a praetorian version of the xenomorph runner. The other xenomorphs quickly catch up to the APC, the warriors and drones carefully examine the armoured vehicle looking for a way in. The Crusher growled as a Praetorian stomped through the crowd of warriors and drones. The praetorian roars as an acidspitter moves among the crowd, its distinct head is covered in large glands filled with specialized  acid. The acidspitter vomits on to the APC door, the green goop quickly eats the metal of the door until there is nothing left but a gaping whole. 

Locale: Fiorina “Fury” 161, Former Weyland-Yutani Correctional Facility Garage.

Meanwhile in the Garage. The Marine’s motion trackers begin to detect movement from outside of the APCs. “Sir, movement...It ain't us” Private Fry informed.

“Survivors?” Lt. Powell asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” Private Fry replied.

“Wait, why are they on top of us? We didn’t see any stairs...” Lt. Powell pondered, “Oh ****.” he muttered a curse word .

“****, their on top of us?!” Callie sweared out loud.

“Stay Frosty, Callie” Sgt. Shepard reminded the young marine.

“Private Kefla and Private Lupator, careful and slow, open the APC door” Lt. Powell ordered.

Callie nods as she slowly opens the APC door as the others stand guard behind her, she shoves the barrel of her smartgun out of the APC. Lanny follows behind her. Pvt. Kelfa and Pvt. Lupator slowly looked up at the ceiling and there they were, just hanging onto the chains on the ceilings like bats. Callie and Lanny slowly returned inside the APC, carefully and slowly shut the door. 

“They are just hanging there,” Lanny reported.

“Hanging? What do you mean?” Sgt. Shepard asked.

“Yeah they are sleeping on the pulley chains” Lanny added.

“Anything else?” Lt. Powell asked.

“Yes sir, there is one other thing. These xenos are different” Callie added.

“How different?” Lt. Powell asked.

“They’re yellow,” Callie replied, “Not piss yellow but gold yellow”

“What do you want to do, Lieutenant?” Sgt. Shepard asked.

Lt. Powell sighs, he turns on the APC’s radio before speaking into the mouthpiece “Alright marines. Currently there are hostiles above us, hanging in the chains. We have two options, we either stay put or we try to eliminate them” 

“I don’t like those options” Pvt. Fry whispered to Griffin.

“Why haven’t they attacked yet?” Pvt. Griffin asked Simpson.

“I don’t know,” replied Pvt. Simpson.

“I don’t wanna know” PFC Sanchez retorted.

“Maybe they are still dormant,” Pvt Ikari added.

“Not the time for theories Spike” Pvt. Soryu shot him down, figuratively.

“What do you think, Brina?” Pvt. Ikari asked the quiet one of their trio.

“It's a possibility” Pvt. Ayanami finally spoke.

“Hold on a sec” Lt. Powell put the mouthpiece down for a second “Cut the chatter,” Lt. Powell ordered before picking up the mouthpiece again.

A loud thud could be heard from the outside. The marines drew their weapons. Pvt. Fry slowly approached the APC’s ****pit to look out the window. Nothing new so far. He continued to stare through the window. A golden segmented tail rises in view, shortly after its dorsal tubes and head were now visible for Fry to see. Fry quickly retreated behind the APC’s driver seat, hoping the xenomorph didn’t “see” him. 

“Hey Callie” whispered PFC Sanchez.

“Hmmm, what?” Private Callie Kefla whispered back.

“Do you think xenomorphs can see?” Jaun Sanchez asked.

“What?” Callie didn’t understand his question.

“Like they have eyes but we can’t see them” Jaun rephrased.

“How should I know?” Callie retorted

The xenomorph stared back at the APC, its vision resembled that of seeing through a dirty fish tank. Its black simple eyes were sunken deep within its skull-like eye sockets beneath a thick layer of fluid underneath the dome of its skull. The image of the APC was murky but clearly visible for it to interpete, he saw something move within it drawing its attention towards the front of the machine. It didn’t take long for its attention span to end. Still it rubbed its elongated head against the APC, slowly feeling alongside its smooth metallic surface. It could sense the electronics humming through its surface. It peels back its lips, sneering at the APC door before lunging its head against the door. THUD! THUD! THUD!

“What's it doing?” Mikaela asked

“Shhhhh!” Callie silenced her sister.

The xenomorph was able to deduce the metal thing was hollow inside and it was barely able to hear non-mechanical noise disturbances. The xenomorph chattered its teeth while inhaling the surrounding air into its mouth building up to a loud raspy hiss. The others on the ceiling, although already awakened from the APC’s arrival, finally began to make their way down to the garage floor. 

They surround the trio of APCs. Then a loud crackling noise boomed within the garage, “Come out, we all know you are in there” said a condescending voice. “Now can we do this the easy way or do my lovelies have to rip you and your marines to shreds? Come on out, I give you my word they are semi-tame just don’t provoke them. Here I’ll tell them to back off”

Suddenly the xenomorphs crowding the APC doors, reluctantly covered their fangs with their lips before backing away from the APCs as if being controlled. 

“See, now come on out” the voice demanded.

The APC doors slide open, the marines cautiously aim their pulse rifles and smartguns at the golden colored xenomorphs. They resume their snarls and hisses but do not approach the marines.

“Now how about you calmly walk up them stairs and come on into my office” the voice orders.

Lt. Powell nodded to his troops as they slowly made their way up the stairs, the xenomorphs at a safe distance slowly gained ground between the marines and the three APCs. As the last marine enters through the facility doors, the xenomorphs resume examining the APCs. The Marines are then greeted by another xenomorph but this one had the more familiar black carapace but its arms were amputated at the elbow with its forearms replaced with gauss rifles while a cybernetic eye grafted on to its “face” emitted a red laser as it scans the marines. It then turns to the fork in the corridors motioning the marines to follow it.

The xenoborg led the marines to the K-Labs, the door slid open as the marines walked through it. The lab was well lit and filled with large glass container units with golden colored xenomorphs floating in suspended animation. The scientists stared at the marines skeptically as they backed away from them. The leading marine was a tall caucasian with short crew cut black hair with a pronounced nose and a hardened expression. The sergeant was also caucasian, but a mildly attractive woman with red short hair in a bob-style and piercing green eyes. Following them was a bald hispanic man, several asian marines of japanese descent, a chunky african-descent marine, another ginger, and some more caucasian and african-descent marines. 

“Beautiful aren’t they” said a man as he spun around in his chair. He was a man in his late forties with short combed brown hair.

“You know what they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder” Lt. Powell retorted.

“You don’t understand what's going on do you?” the man then sighs, “The K-series is the future of modern warfare. Machines can be reprogrammed, soldiers have families, and mercenaries demand money” 

“You think you can control them? Hey doctor…”

“Kadinsky, Dr. Samuel Kadinsky” the older man plays with his mustache.

“Yeah, I am no xenoarchaeologist but didn’t the xenomorphs rebel against their previous masters? What makes you think you can succeed where the Engineers have failed? I have read the Mala reports”

“Ah but what you have failed to realize, unlike the Engineers. We have contingencies in place in cases like those” He walks past Lt. Powell as he caresses one of the tanks, “Perhaps the engineers, though god-like they maybe simply lacked the patience to groom these magnificent beasts into something grander?”

“Oh what's grander than a nuclear weapon with teeth that spreads like anthrax?” Lt. Powell snarked.

“I sense a hint of sarcasm mixed with some respect for them” Kadinsky turned towards the lieutenant.

“I respect their adaptability, their unity as a fighting unit,” Powell then shoots a glare at Kadinsky, “and you want them to roll over and play fetch”

Kadinsky’s face turned from amused to annoyed, ‘Listen here…” the door slid open as a young asian man with bleached white hair entered the room. Kadinsky’s annoyed expression only soured even more when his colleague coolly entered the labs. “**** he’s here”

The white hair man waved at his colleague before walking towards them, “Showing off your pets to our guests?”

“Who are you?” Lt. Powell asked.

“Allow me to properly introduce myself, Dr. Lee Chaolan. You must be Lieutenant Arthur Allen Powell, yes I heard alot about you. Colonist kid, lost your family on the frontier world Lv-612..to xenomorphs, no less” 

“You’ve read my file, you would know that your company had dropped the ball on Neoterra”

“There was nothing Weyland-Yutani could do for your “home” Lieutenant. However I believe we can do it right, through my and Dr. Kadinksy’s experiments we are inching closer to controlling the xenomorphs and unlocking their secrets. If you allow us some of your time”

“I don’t have time for a demonstration,” Lt. Powell growled as he and his men began walking towards the door.

“The POWs you were supposed to transport here, never arrived at this facility. We were in contact with the esmeralda up until the UPP destroyed it. The Esmeralda’s transporters did arrive at our starport, however the UPP forces had taken the starport over,” Dr. Chaolan mentions.

“Starport was abandoned when we arrived,” Lt. Powell corrected, “Attacked actually, we found signs of a fight near the prison transport. I am assuming this was your pet’s work?” Powell glares at Kadinksy.

“Actually no,” Kadinsky sighs, “I am tired of keeping secrets, I might not look it but I'm actually 64 years old” he glares at Dr. Chaolan before turning towards Lt. Powell. “About Forty-One years ago, this planet was a penal colony. The worst of the worst humanity has ever spawned from its crotch” Kadinksy explained.

“Gross,” Callie added, while Mikaela shook her head disapprovingly

“Disgusting” Tiffany shook her head too.

“To tell a long story short, we try to resurrect what we thought was an extinct species. We imported what we thought were the last remaining xenomorph eggs to a special facility, whose whereabouts are unknown to me and brought only adult specimens here. Unfortunately for reasons unknown the specimens escaped and ran amok inside the penitentiary. We dubbed this specimen the Runner, due to its fast speed. Our lack of knowledge in containing the Runner was our biggest mistake. We only had Ellen Ripley’s report to go off of, she never mentioned the creature's continued metamorphosis. The next time we saw the Runner it had evolved thicker armor, our pistols were no match for the creature. We managed to contain it from the rest of the facility, leaving half of the inmates to fend for themselves against the creature. For a while we were safe and had everything back under our control until that thing arrived” Kadinsky clenches his fists.

“What thing?” Lt. Powell asked

“An invisible predator species, I originally thought they were an old central american myth about a demon but the demon is real and he is an advanced alien. The creature slipped past our defences, we lost some guards and the creature broke into the quarantine wing. It took us by surprise how many xenomorphs came flooding out of the quarantine zone, even with the few operational surveillance cameras” Dr. Kadinsky pulls out a cigarette then lights it, “The xenomorphs quickly overran the rest of the facility, me and a few others made a beeline to the starport. I was the only one that escaped from that planet alive at the cost of sacrificing my friends”

“I am assuming the true reason why you created the K-series is to get vengeance on the xenos?” Lt. Powell rationalized.

“Precisely,“ Kadinsky smiled.

“What about you?” Lt. Powell turned to Dr. Chaolan.

“My xenomorph research is to cure terminal diseases like duchenne muscular dystrophy,” Dr. Chaolan explained, Dr. Chaolan walks away before turning around, “Come, see for yourself”

“Alright,” Lt. Powell agreed.

Chaolan led the Marines down to the H- Labs not too far from the K-Labs. He swipes his card, the lab doors slide open. Like the other labs, large tanks filled with xenomorphs in suspended animation but these weren’t the gold colored K-series; These xenomorphs were rusty brown, their bodies were more organic and skeletal compared to the xenomorphs these marines had witnessed to this point. Their heads were flatter and narrower, their jaws and chin were longer than their biomechanical counterparts. The apex of their tail were more blade-like with longer dorsal spines leading down the tip.

Lt. Powell noticed another lab door around the corner but continued following Dr. Chaolan. The forward door opens to a room where a wheelchair girl was hooked up to a massive machine, she weakly looks up at the young doctor, “Lee? Is that you?” she asks.

“Yes Ling, it’s me” Dr. Chaolan holds her weakened hands.

“It hurts, Lee. Make it stop..” Ling begs the doctor.

Dr. Chaolan gestures one of the nurses to give her the sedative, “This is Ling Xiaoyu, she is my half-sister” 

CHAPTER 19: THE WRAITH

Date: December 10th, 2230

Locale: Planet Nekket, Weyland-Yutani Biotechnologies Housing Quarters.

Asuka awoke as she stared up at a dark grey ceiling with a rotating fan. She then stared at her ancestor’s armor closest before sitting up. She enters her bathroom to brush her teeth. Afterwards she practices Kendo with her synthetic assistant Rook, a bishop model android. She swings her wooden blade at Rook, the android blocks her attack. Rook uses his weight to shove Asuka and her kendo sword backwards. Asuka was breathing heavily, she was not gaining any ground against the synth. Sweat rolls down her face as her expressions become increasingly aggressive, she decides to charge at with a power attack but Rook dodges her swing, Asuka’s eyes dart towards the synthetic realizing her mistake too late before he hits her across the abdomen area. “Sorry, Ms. Kazama but you lost to me again, shall I lower the difficulty level?”

Asuka removes her kendo gear, she cracks her neck. “Maybe some other time, Rook” she looks over at him, “What's next on my training schedule?” 

“You excel at Jujutsu and Karate with flying colors, however your sword fighting skills need improvement but it’s acceptable” Rook explained.

Asuka undresses in the bathroom, her clothes lay in a pile as she turns on the shower. “So when do I start my mission?” Asuka asks as she steps into the shower. Rook’s voice emits over the intercom, “You start tomorrow, your first mission to a former correctional facility called Fury 161”

“Wait, isn't that now a xenomorph research facility?” Asuka asked. 

“Yes,” Rook replied.

“They are sending me there alone?” Asuka asked, her voice a little shaky.

“No” Room replied, Asuka let out a sigh of relief, “You’ll be part of a team”

“Good, it's just I never encountered a xenomorph,” Asuka revealed, “Are they really dangerous as they say?”

“I have never encountered one myself either, I am just your training instructor. However, your team will inform you what to expect. They are seasoned soldiers”

Date: December 11th, 2230

Locale: Planet Fiorina “Fury” 161, USCSS Black Dream.

A dark sleek ship FTL jumps into orbit above the bronze planet. Seven cryogenic pods release a mist as they slide open revealing their occupants. A pink haired fujiko model synthetic called Sakura injects their leader with the stimulant first. A tall man arose from his pod now full of energy as the others slowly sat up feeling the effects of hypersleep. The tall man was Genji Yamato-Hendrickson, a 17 year veteran of the Kurosakura division of Weyland-Yutani most elite corporate black-ops, the Wraiths. Genji walks over to his locker, he signals Sakura to attach his cybernetic arms to his shoulder sockets. His neural interface does a quick diagnostic check, he begins to operate his cybernetic limbs as if they were his natural limbs. 

The next operative to receive the stimulant was a half shaved redhead woman. She bolted to her locker as she quickly loaded her arms up with small caliber bullets. She looked over at Genji as he donned his black nanosuit, she smiled at him as he sat down loading his WY-102 Sniper Railgun. Little is known about Nikita Silverman, she served the Wraiths ever since she was a teenager. “Hey Genji, why don’t we ditch the rugrats and go out on this op on our own?”

“That will violate company orders,” he shoots her a discouraging look before turning to the pink haired synthetic, “Sakura, administer the rest of the stimulants”

Sakura injects the last five with the stimulants, among them was Asuka Kazama. Tyrone White a shaved head muscular african american quickly dons his nanoarmor before the other four rookies. Kyle Balgoyavitch, a spikey haired ginger slips into his nanoarmor second, Josie Rizal, a dark tan-skinned beautiful young filipino woman with short black hair which flared out in the back; slips into her nanoarmor third,  Emilie “Lili” De Rochefort, a young woman with long blonde hair puts on her nanoarmor fourth, before Asuka Kazama could don her nanosuit last.

“Rise from your grave, Wraiths!” Genji started shouting. Nikita, Tyrone, Kyle, Josie, Lili and Asuka lined up in formation, all dressed in their black clad nano armor suits armed with their standard issue WY-102 Sniper Railgun, a Ceramic Katana, ceramic shurikens, and ceramic kunai.

“Alright, the company has selected you five lost souls to be part of this great unit. You move well, you get to ascend. Fail me…” he shoots a look at the five rookies, “You’ll remain a lost soul, are we clear?”

“Sir, yes sir!” the rookies shout in unison. 

“That's what I want to hear” Genji walks over to the image projector, “Now for the mission at hand. We are to infiltrate the research facility, you may have heard of Dr. Samuel Kadinsky and Dr. Lee Chaolan. They have served the Company well and their research are highly valuable assets. However one of the higher ups wants direct results, so we are going to give the scientists a little push”

The USCSS Black Dream shrouds itself in a light bending energy field as it makes its descent through Fiorina “Fury” 161 upper atmosphere. The black ship tears through the thick blanket of clouds as it flies over the former correctional facility. The pure strain animal-spawned xenomorphs collectively hiss at the cloaked starcraft as it lands within the “safe” zone. The Wraiths enshroud themselves with their own personal cloaking devices as they quickly disembark from the Black Dream, the cloaked ship departs from the landing zone back into orbit. Genji directed the wraiths to the gatehouse control center, Josie uses her computer skills to bypass the security systems.

“Rizal, open the northern gate. That should give the science team a challenge” Genji ordered the young filipino woman. 

“Sir” she nodded in acknowledgement. The northern gate opens near a pure-strain xenomorph hive cluster. A pack of xenomorphs dragged off the last remaining marines out of the Unit 02 APC, while the others began mobilizing towards the open northern gate. A pack of drones scout out the gatehouse before traversing deeper into the former correctional facility. The drones could sense their animal-spawned brethren within the complex. The drones spread out to cover more ground. 

“Okay lost souls, spread out and keep the xenomorphs from spreading beyond mission parameters”

Date: December 11th, 2230

Locale: Planet Fiorina “Fury” 161, Former Correctional Facility outskirts.

Two yautja watch from a communication tower not too far away from the ooman facility. Setsunde and Youma watched as the cloaked ooman ship departed from this world. Setsunde turned to her younger sister, “The Oomans are growing too dangerous, your failure continues to haunt us little sister”

Youma remained silent, the two yautja continued to monitor the landscape as xenomorphs slowly traverse throughout the correctional facilities. Three lights blaze across the cloudy sky, the yautja turned their gazes to the fireballs. Their biomasks quickly identify the fireballs, they were ooman ships. The fireballs break through the clouds, revealing three light blue tub-shaped starships, displaying the UPP insignia on their sides.

“What are those?” Youma growls

“More oomans, they belong to a different clan,” Setsunde tilts her head. The UPP soldiers disembark as they mobilize towards the correctional facility unaware of the xenomorphs lurking within. 

Setsunde and Youma leap down from the com-tower as they encroach on the newly arrived oomans. The oomans reacted to the remains of their comrades and the scattered bodies of the kainde amedha.

“So this is the fate of our first scouting patrol?” the commanding officer spoke in a heavy russian accent.

“Comrade commander,” a lower ranking UPP grunt salutes.

“Yes, Private Yuri? What is it?” the commanding officer answered.

“Dimitri has finished recon, the south gate has been opened. Comrade Commander Vladimir, how should we proceed?”

“Secure the southern gate, I want our forces mobilized immediately” Commander Vladimir ordered, “For the Progression, for the People, for the Union!”

Setsunde began recording their voices in her audiobanks. “Bleg...foor day you-yun...bleh. Krrrrrrrr, De-meat-tree kas fin-nish recon, krukrukruk, What is it?” she played with the voices she had recorded. The two Yautja huntresses watched as the UPP soldiers made it down the hill. Setsunde and Youma silently follow behind them as they pass through the metal gatehouse. The UPP left a token guard post at the mouth of the Southern Gate. 

“For the Union” Setsunde plays back Commander Vladimir’s voice. The UPP soldiers began saluting, before darting their eyes around confused. The invisible huntresses pass through into the gate house. The UPP soldiers make one pass before entering the gate house themselves, sealing the gates behind. 

“Did you hear that Sophie, sounded like the commander’s voice?” said one of the UPP soldiers.

“I know what ya mean Misha, I heard it too” Sophie replied.

“I hate this job, I just want to see me wife and daughter again,” Misha complained.

“Once this mission is over, why don’t we celebrate with a shot of Vodka, no?” Sophie tried to cheer up his fellow comrade.

“If we ever make it off this god forsaken rock, you’ve seen the state of our first squaddie comrades? Ripped limb to limb they were” Misha reminded his comrade.

The yautja huntresses quickly out pace the UPP soldiers, “What was that?” asked one burly soldier.

“The wind, Mikael. Don’t be so jumpy” retorted another UPP soldier.

“Bull ****! It wasn’t the wind, Nicolai! I felt someone brush past me!” Mikael shouted as the huntresses began scaling on top of the prison complex’s roof.

“Silence back there!” Commander Vladimir shouted to keep his men in line. 

“Don’t be so jumpy” Setsunde played back Nicolai’s voice.

“What the ****?” Nicolai cursed.

“I told you Nicolai, it wasn’t the wind!” Mikael growled.

“That wasn’t me,” Nicolai protested.

“Bull ****” Setsunde played back Mikael’s voice.

“What the ****!” Mikael cursed.

“Someone is toying with us, trying to get us to fight each other” Nicolai points up at the sky.

“Show yourself” Mikael demanded as the rest of the UPP soldiers began to point their weapons out in all directions.

“Did you hear that?” Setsunde played back Misha’s voice.

A dark shadow bolts past a series of crates. A startled UPP soldier begins to open fire on the crates causing the others to spontaneously begin firing in the air. “Cease fire!” Commander Vladimir ordered, “Cease fire!”

Sestunde gives her sister a glance, “Let the hunt begin” she clicks her mandibles. She switches from the blue heat vision to the red bioelectric vision. Surrounding the UPP soldiers were dozens of xenomorphs.

CHAPTER 20: THE BROOD WAR

The alarms begin blaring as the security systems are tripped. Chaolan power walks to the security vids, a swarm of drones and warriors were clawing at the zoological wing. Among the ridged head warriors and smooth head drones was a pack wide head xenomorphs with glowing sacks of acid adorning the sides of their heads, the spitters began vomiting up concentrated acid on the walls. The drones and warriors pry the weakened metal away as they burrow through the barrier. The animal-spawned xenomorphs greet their human-born relatives.

Kadinsky watches from his labs as the xenomorphs reunite with their trapped sisters, he glances over at a red handle switch. “****!” Kadinsky pulls the lever switch down. The fluid in the K-series tanks begins to drain as the golden xenomorphs awaken from their suspended states. The glass barriers are removed from the K-series xenomorphs. The golden xenomorphs sneered as they approached Kadinsky. The scientists remained perfectly still as they K-series surrounded their creator before turning their attention to the exit. Kadinsky smiles with a sense of accomplishment.

Genji stared at the videos, he glanced at the junior members of his squad, “Rizal, close the north gate” he ordered the filipino girl. The north gate doors close behind a pack of warriors, spitters, and a lone praetorian. The praetorian hisses angrily. 

Setsunde and Youma both nod and cloak as the two yautja sisters go their separate ways. The K-series xenomorphs join up with the others of their kind as they mobilize towards the zoological wing. The surveillance cameras send video feeds to Kadinsky’s lab, Chaolan’s lab, and the security control room where the Wraiths reside. Genji and Nikita smile as the K-series are now on the move.

Setsunde smashes her fist into the door control unit, the electronic door failsafe kicks in allowing the electronic door to open. She navigates through the K-wing stairway before spotting a pack of K-series xenomorphs. They were accompanying some of the oomens like obedient pets, Setsunde slowly approached the group. Wondering why the kainde amedha had not attacked yet, one of the K-series turned its gaze towards Setsunde. Setsunde prepared herself as the golden kainde amedha approached her, then it stopped. The creature just stared at the cloaked hunter. Was it aware of her presence or was it just dumb? Then the others began approaching her, they too just sat there staring at her. The oomens looked over to see their creations were acting strangely.

“Oi! Whot ya doin’ over there?” one of the technicians demanded.

Setsunde attempts to walk past the golden kainde amedha but they mirror her movements, frustrated she deploys her combi-stick, she thrashes into the K-series with the bladed end. Their carapace comes apart like a hot knife through butter, their blood sizzles on the floor and walls. Her biomask’s eye ports flash yellow as she approaches the oomens, the oomens scream as they flee further down the corridors. She would pursue the oomens however her code forbids her to harm prey that can’t fight back, Setsunde growls in frustration. She quickly runs down the corridor ignoring all the cowering oomens. She spots several kainde amedha leaving a large door, moving in a double uniformed line. It reminded Setsunde of the organized formations of oomen warriors. 

As the strange kainde amedha were no longer in her viewing range, Setsunde slowly approached the door they had departed from. 

She peeked in seeing an oomen releasing the kainde amedha. More K-series step out of their pods to “greet” their creator.

“This ooman controls the kainde amedha?” Setsunde clicked her mandibles in confusion. Something about this oomen was familiar to Setsunde. She switches to her heat vision, she then scans his face. 

She quickly switches to x-ray vision, she notices this ooman’s injuries match up to the one she inflicted on an ooman many decades ago; on this very planet. A missing rib, an artificial hip, and shoulder blade. She retracts her combi-stick, she deploys her wrist blades as she approaches this ooman.

The K-series xenomorphs finally arrived at the zoological wing, the golden armoured xenomorphs quickly overwhelmed the gun metal colored pure strain xenomorphs. The pure-strain xenomorphs decimate the man-made ones. The K-series limbs were ripped out of their sockets, their jaws pulled from their hinges before being gutted. “My children!” Kadinsky screams at the surveillance vids. His Xenoborg guards sense Setsunde’s approach, they quickly engage the hidden enemy in the room. Setsunde was taken aback at the cybernetic abominations. Their eye tracker beam locks on to the yautja, the xenoborgs begin to open fire as the hunter dashes before a computer console.

“Doctor Kadinsky, you must depart from this facility, at once'' One of Kadinsky’s scientists demanded. 

“My children,” Kadinsky repeated.

“Your children’s death will be in vain if you don’t evacuate immediately sir”

Kadinsky nods as he and the rest of his science team quickly retreat into the panic room. Kadinsky smashes the emergency blast door button behind himself and his team. He nods to his scientists as he pulls open the escape hatch lever.

Setsunde leaps from the computer terminal, she dashes for the panic room door as she fires a barrage of plasma from her shoulder mounted plasma castor at the xenoborgs. One of the xenoborgs is reduced to a shower of acid, chunks of carapace and metal. The other xenoborg dodges the incoming plasma as it ducks for cover. Setsunde redirects her plasma castor to the panic room door. Pshhhrooook! The panic room door bursts open.

The second xenoborg guard leaps from its hiding place, its face mounted laser targets the yautja huntress. Setsunde’s plasma castor spins back around to the xenoborg. The xenoborg begins warming up its railgun, Pshhhrooook! The xenoborg is blown to bits.

The wraiths monitored the security footage, “Plan B,” Genji uttered out loud. He glances at the monitor of the escape tunnel where Kadinsky and his science team were being held. He glanced over at the monitor in the K-labs; two xenoborg units were destroyed. He glanced at the above monitor where a tall muscular humanoid creature was slowly making its way into the escape tunnel.

“Predators” he gritted his teeth. “Balgoyavitch and Rizal” he exchanged a sideways glance at the two “lost souls”. “Activate your personal cloaks, make sure Kadinsky and his team get to the emergency shuttle bay. Should anything happened, at least recover the K-series data”

“Sir, yes sir” the two spoke in unison.

“Kazama, Rocheford, and White” he turned his gaze to the three other “lost souls”, “Take to the roof and eliminate the UPP,” he ordered.

“Sir, yes sir” the three spoke in unison.

The two groups of lost souls left the two senior waiths in the control room.  Genji and Nikita stared at the monitors, “Commander, Dr. Lee Chaolan can not be trusted”

“Why not, Lieutenant? His record is clean, he served the company faithfully his entire life. What makes you suspect him of being a traitor?”

“I gathered some vital intel from my time out on the frontier, the H-series he described is a cover for its true purpose” Nikita explained.

“Is this intel reliable? What's the true purpose of the H-series?” Genji asked, curious.

“To create himself a loyal army of xenos, that serve only him. He will use this project to spread chaos throughout the systems” Nikita stared at her commander with a serious look in her eyes.

“Then we must stop him at once,” Genji reminded his subordinate.

Rizal and Balgoyavitch race down the corridors following their cybernetic grafted neural interface nav points. A loud hiss could be heard around the bend. A lone pure-strain drone was in the middle of its molting process, the back of its carapace had already split open as its armoured dorsal tubes pushed out of the older thin carapace. “It's molting,” Balgoyavitch stated the obvious.

“Come on” Rizal tugged at his arm. The drone weakly raised its head, its smooth domed cranium began to crack. The surface around the broken areas began to slide in opposite directions as the cracks grew into a division. Sharp protrusions adorned its new cranium as the old smooth dome fell to the floor. The xenomorph warrior struggled to free itself from its old drone carapace.

Meanwhile, Kazama, White, and Rocheford exit the rooftop door. They peer over the complex down at the courtyard, the UPP soldiers had mysteriously vanished. Leaving behind only blood, their weapons, and a few dead xenos. The sound of a gun clicking alerted the “lost souls”, a lone UPP soldier covered in blood aimed his AK-97 at the three operatives. White and Rocheford aimed their railguns at the man while Kazama drew her sword. 

“You UA bastards! You shall pay for what you've done today!” The UPP soldier slowly approaches the group. The group hesitates to kill the soldier, “This is for Nicolai, Dimitri, Yuri, and Vladimir!” he attempts to fire his weapon, click! “Shiit,” he curses as his gun jams. Asuka Kazama dashes towards the man, she pulls out her ancestor’s sword only to hesitate once she gets in cutting range. The UPP soldier drops his gun, he pulls out a vial of powder. He blows the fine powder into Kazma’s face, she drops her sword as she attempts to rub the burning powder from her eyes. The UPP soldier punches her in the stomach before grabbing her by the wrist, spinning the young woman around taking her as his hostage.

“White, shoot him!” Rocheford demands.

“I can’t, Kazama is in the way,” White retorts.

He slowly starts stepping backwards towards the ledge, “You shoot me, your little asian thot dies with me” White and Rocheford lowered their weapons, “Yes. YES, that is more like it” the back of his feet reach the ledge. White and Rocheford raise their weapons at the soldier, “Idiots, you focking idiots!” He notices their guns weren’t aiming at him, “what are you aiming at…” he is suddenly silenced. 

Blood splats on Asuka’s face, she sideways glanced at her capturer, a block rod was now in place of the soldier’s head. The rod retracts, pulling the man’s body into the air. His lifeless hands released Asuka from his grasp as the rest of him entered a massive creature’s mouth. It was a xenomorph, however it was drastically different then the ones she had encountered thus far. Its head was a dark bronze while the rest of it was dark greyish black, its jaws were elongated compared to the common human-spawn variety and sported two large yautja-like supper mandibles. The rest of its body was vaguely snake-like, its upper ribs were stretched into a cobra-like hood with tiny jointed claws. The snakealien began to slither towards Kazama and her comrades.

White quickly neutralizes the large xeno with his railgun, the snakealien falls off the roof dead. The xenomorphs on the ground quickly turn their heads up at the rooftops. The usual human-spawn xenos darted towards the building walls followed by canine-spawned runners and feline-spawned stalkers. Asuka rolls over to grab her sword, she slices away at two encroaching runners. They fall into the swarm of angry xenos below. 

White and Rocheford both grab Asuka Kazama as a drone climbs over the ledge. The three lost souls quickly retreated behind the sliding mechanical door. Rocheford locks the door, the drone peers through the window. Drool drips from its mouth as it peels back its thin lips, its head shakes as it opens its jaws. Its secondary jaws rapidly extend out to smash the glass window. Kazma, Rocheford, and White retreat down the corridor as the xenomorphs attempt to pass through the door.

CHAPTER 21: THE EVACUATION

Dr. Chaolan stared at the monitors, between seeing the K-series getting slaughtered by the pure-strain xenomorphs and the surviving UPP soldiers being captured by the xenomorphs. Chaolan shifted his gaze back to the marines. 

“How could this happen? We took every precaution when designing this facility, there is no way the xenomorphs could have broken in! Unless…” Chaolan glances back over the surveillance monitor, two corporate black op members are seen running down a corridor leading to the starport. “Wraiths? Damn you, Weyland-Yutani!!”

“Dr. Chaolan, what about us?” asked one of his scientists.

“Prepare to evacuate as well, I’ll remain behind,” the silver-blonde haired scientist then turned towards the Lieutenant, “Lt. Powell, May I ask of you to have your men escort my scientists to the dropships”

“What about you?” Powell asked.

“Don’t worry about me, just get my team outta here. I will not have research taken from me when I’m so close to saving her. I’ll catch up to when I am done”

“Good Luck,” Powell said his farewell before taking his marines out of the labs. The xenoborgs guard the outside of the labs, awaiting for the enemy to enter their crosshairs. The marines doubled time down the dark metal hallways, leap forging behind cover before proceeding forward to the next vantage point. An eerie silence permeated the dark corridors. Bleep… the motion tracker detected movement up ahead. Bleep, Bleep, bleep… multiple white circles began flooding across the motion tracker’s monitor screen. The sounds of xenomorphs screeching and growling grew louder as the marines slowly encroached on their positions. 

The marines and the escorted scientists entered a hallway with large windows dominating the right wall. What little was left of the K-series was still putting up a fleeting resistance against the superior pure-strain xenomorphs. The walls hissed as glass cylinders bore through from hollow chambers built inside the walls. Both xenomorphs turned their attention to the cylinders. The glass containers popped their metal lids as hot evaporation air spewed forth. A xenomorph emerges from the glass container, its carapace a rusty brown opposed to the blackish grey of the pure-strains. Its jaws were cheekless, the lower jaw was barely held together by a few tendons of connective tissues to its upper jaws. The rest of its body was skeletal and fleshy compared to the biomechanical nature of the pure strain. The H-series roared at the pure strains and the K-series xenomorphs.

The H-series finished off the weaker K-series xenomorphs, before turning their attention to the pure-strain xenomorphs. The h-series charged at the purer xenos, their movements confused the pure strains. The H-series attacks were not very organized compared to the K-series but they were able to take out a few of the pure xenomorphs. The pure strain xenomorphs began their counter attack on the H-series after learning their opponents' attack patterns. The H-series xenomorphs fell quicker than their K-series counterparts.

“Damn it!” shouted one of the scientists, the xenomorphs below turned their attention to the high rise windowed corridor above.

“Everybody move!” Shouted Lt. Powell as they double time through the corridor. 

Blagoyavitch and Rizal were sprinting down the dark corridor, a loud hiss could be heard behind them. Blagoyavitch turned his head but saw nothing.

A xenomorph warrior bursts from a maintenance hatch near the redhead “Look out!” Josie Rizal screamed as she raised her railgun, the warrior quickly wiggled itself out from the narrow maintenance. Wasting no time, it  head butted Josie into the corridor wall. The warrior quickly spun around to grasp its claws around Blagoyavitch’s neck as it lifted him eye level to the xenomorph. Blagoyavitch felt his feet dangling off the ground, his eyes widened as the warrior began to peel back its lips. 

BAM! Rizal writhing in pain lowered her smoking rifle down, the injured warrior blood splashed on Blagoyavitch’s arm as it fired out its second jaws, taking Blagoyavitch’s ear off by mistake. The warrior fell to the ground now writhing in pain.

“Blagoyavicth!” Rizal rushed to her injured comrade’s side.

“Bastard took my ear off...and bled on my arm...” Blagoyavitch writhed in excruciating pain.

“I’m applying some Newt Solution,” Rizal pulls out a long tube filled with an acid counteractive chemical from her belt, displaying the MediCorp logo on it; in fine print Dr. Rebecca Jordan’s name was plastered on it. The solution quickly neutralizes the xenomorph’s acidic blood into harmless compounds. Rizal pulls out another packet to cauterize Blagoyavitch’s ear wound.

“Hey I never caught your first name,” he was curious.

“Josie,” Rizal answered.

“Kyle,” Blagoyavitch replied.

The warrior growls as it attempts to stand but with the loss of her tail, the xenomorph’s dorsal tubes and spinal spike have now become a hindrance to her…

At least on two legs, the warrior hisses at the two lost souls. Josie and Kyle quickly stood up as the xenomorph warrior charged at them. The two quickly bolted out of its way. The creature collided into the wall as the two young corporate black ops members made their escape. The tailless warrior pursued them, then she spotted another maintenance duct. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Kadinsky and his science team had reached the dropships. The scientists sighed in relief as they approached the landing ramp. Dr. Kadinsky stopped to take one last glance around the starport, feeling like this is the last time he will see this facility.

“Dr. Kadinsky, come on! We don’t have much time! Let's go!” one of the scientists demanded.

Dr. Kadinsky almost boarded the dropship, when a distorted blur caught his eye. Kadinsky suddenly is pulled away from the dropship ramp. The scientists in a panic raise the dropship’s ramp. Kadinsky felt helpless and abandoned as the dropship quickly departed from the starport. “Cowards!” he curses to himself. Kadinsky is again thrown onto the ground as the cloaked figure extends out her wrist blades, Kadinsky screams as the yautja approaches him.

Josie and Kyle make it to the starport but they were too late, the dropships were already departing. Kyle felt something wet dripping on his face, he wiped it off with his hand. Josie screams as she points her finger at the ceiling. Kyle double backs as he spots an upside down skinless corpse dangling from the ceiling. Kyle glances back at the starport and notices a few dropships left. He grabs Josie by the arm as he motions her to follow him to the starcrafts. They sealed themselves inside an old shuttle with no window ports. Kyle and Josie could hear something moving around outside. Kyle listens to the rhythms of the footsteps, the footsteps were slow but he could tell there were multiple individuals outside. 

Were they the rest of the science team, Kyle wondered, if so why weren’t they taking off? A loud thud could be heard from outside their starcraft’s door, whoever they were, they were more interested in their ship. Josie whimpered as she heard a thud on their ship’s roof followed by a series of quiter thuds running down the ship. Josie and Kyle turned to each other realizing what was outside; Xenomorphs.

CHAPTER 22: THE MOLE

The xenoborg guards detect movement from around the corridor through their onboard motion detector, readying their grafted railguns. The motion detector paled in comparison to the xenoborg’s natural xenomorph senses. Through its carapace it can feel the vibrations in the ground better than the motion tracker. The xenoborgs picked up the pheromones of the intruders, the surgically grafted neural interface registers the intruders as blue, human. The two senior members of the Wraiths approached the xenoborg guards, their Weyland-Yutani badges were immediately registered by the xenoborg’s cybernetic monoeye. The xenoborgs allowed the two wraiths to enter Chaolan’s laboratory.

Chaolan carefully extracts a vial from one of the freezer units, the vial contains a dark greenish fluid inside, he glanced at the security footage and spotted Nikita and Genji outside of his door. “**** they're here” he quickly places the vial inside a syringe gun before shooting the contents of the vial into his sister’s IV. Chaolan quickly closes the door to his sister’s chamber before entering the main chamber of his laboratory. Genji and Nikita enter through the main door. “Ah Yamato-Hendrickson and Silvermen, what a pleasant surprise” he tried to hide his nervousness.

“You know why we are here,” Genji retorted.

“Hand over the samples,” Nikita demanded at gunpoint.

“Silverman, we need the doctor to come with us willingly, we don’t need an unwanted incident” Genji glanced at his partner.

“He is too dangerous, he might try something” Nikita motioned her head towards the open freezer unit, “look the freezer is open”

“I was in the middle of packing away the samples for transportation, in case you haven’t noticed we are in the middle of an evacuation” Chaolan retorted.

“That is why we are here, you and your sister are to be evacuated to the nearest company station...” Genji suddenly drops to the floor, after a loud bang. Chaolan looked down at him in shock before glancing back up at Nikita.

Nikita holsters her sidearm, “Gomensei, Genji. But your usefulness has come to an end” she walked over her former comrade as she inserted a memory stick into the computers; to collect the data off of them.

“Why Nikita?” Genji looks up at his former comrade writhing in pain.

“Because” she turned around, “Chigusa Corporation, pays better” she reaches over at her belt and unhooks a walkie talkie-like device, she squeezes the device as a signal enters the computers. The doors containing the more advanced hybrids slowly begin to open. The xenoborgs outside of the room were reprogrammed to shoot all weyland-yutani personnel on sight; including Wraiths. The xenoborgs sense three moving bodies, pheromone color, blue.

“No, not the newborns!” Chaolan nervously glares at the sliding doors. A dingy white claw grasps at the side of the door frame. The rest of the creature pulls itself out of the cramped room, its double jointed legs stomp on the metal floor. Its disturbingly skeletal human face stared curiously at the Nikita with its beady little eyes. Then it glanced over at Lee Chaolan, it roared furiously at the scientist as it slowly approached him.

Nikita smiles, “Bon Appetit,” she snarked as she removed the memory stick from the computer as she made her way to the exit. She noticed the xenoborg guards had left their posts, the walls were covered in bullet holes. She could hear faint gunfire echoing from the corridors beyond.
The newborn almost trips over Genji, the creatures glared at the man near its feet. It tilts its ugly head to the side before tilting it back, it roared angrily as it kicked Genji across the room. Genji was briefly airborne before hitting his back and head against the computer terminals.

Kazama, Rocheford, and White were running down the corridor as the xenoborgs pursued them. “**** dead” Asuka Kazama cursed.

“Urg what are we going to do?” Emlili Rocheford asked rhetorically.

“We must think of something?” Tyrone White argued.

The two xenoborgs draw close, their weapons systems lock on to three blue targets in front of it. The targeting system detects five red targets and a single green target rapidly approaching their position. The computer systems re-evaluated the priority of the targets, its top priority was to destroy the green target. The xenoborgs turned away from the lost souls to face this new threat.

“Let’s go, we need to report back to team leader Yamato-Hendrickson,” Emili suggested.

“First we regroup with Blagovich and Rizal,” Asuka countered.
“Who died and put you in charge?!” Emili growled at her counterpart.

“Funny, I can ask the same of you, blondie!” Asuka retorted.

“Such profanity coming from a lowly Jap!” Emili counter retorted.

“You wanna fight?! C’mon, bring it. I double dare you!” Asuka snarled.

“Ugh, such boorish behavior, how unbecoming of a Wraith, wouldn’t you say?” Emili replied.

“Hey ladies, ladies. Please, chill out! We regroup and that's final, capish?” Tyrone attempts to separate them.

“Fine, we will do it your way then” Emili growled.

A loud inhuman roar echoed from the corridor beyond them, the screeches of xenomorphs in pain and the clashing of metal followed shortly after. One of the xenoborgs is thrown into the main corridor, its head sliced cleaning in two. The other xenoborg's remains are splattered all over the wall. The lost souls make a run for it past the corridor, Asuka glanced down the noisy corridor and spotted a large humanoid figure standing on top of a dead spike mohawk xenomorph. Asuka recognizes the hulking muscles, the fleshy dreadlocks, and that metal mask. “Yautja...” she muttered under breath. “Lost Souls, let's double time it!” Asuka shouts to her comrades.

The being looked up at Asuka, her biomask reads the oomen’s heat signatures but her targeting reticles locked on the leading oomen’s weapons. Specifically the sword she is carrying. Youma clicked her mandibles as she recognized the blade. “Kainde Amedha Slayer?” She removes her combi stick from the dead boar-spawned xenomorph’s head. A xenomorph bursts from the floor panel to grab the yautja huntress, she slices its arms off with her smartdisk in hand, before kicking the kainde amedha further into the floor. She looks up as she activates her cloak, her body vanishes out of sight as she begins to pursue the lost souls.

Lee Chaolan fires a couple of rounds with his VP07 pistol into the newborn. The newborn roared as the bullets only served to piss it off more. The creature grabbed Chaolan by the shoulders before shoving him into the wall near his sister’s chamber, forcing the gun out of his hand. Chaolan’s hand accidentally touched the door’s hand scanner. “****!” Lee cursed as the newborn raised the silver haired scientist up to its mouth. Lee couldn’t help but smell its horrible hot breath on his face, as saliva drips from its crooked teeth. Lee spotted something moving in the corner of his eye, it was his half-sister, Ling Xiaoyu.

Ling grabbed the newborn by its sickly yellow-white arm, the newborn turned its gaze at the girl. Her strength was surprisingly strong, the newborn unfurls its brow in curiosity, it could sense something is different about this human. Ling’s eyes were pitched black with red irises, her veins were tainted black due to the serum administered to her was rewriting her DNA. Ling weakly turned to her half-brother, “Lee… w..what's happening to me..e?”

The newborn grows impatient as it releases its grip on Lee, only to lash at Ling instead. Ling falls on the ground, her right arm now covered in blood. She looks over to see the creature’s handiwork, large chunks of flesh were removed from that arm, exposed muscle and bone. Lee quickly dives for his gun as he squeezes off a few shots into the hybrid. The newborn turns its gaze towards Lee. Lee bolts to exit while firing into the hybrid’s hide. Attempting to lure the hybrid away from his sister.

The pathogen quickly regenerates the damaged tissue. Ling sees the newborn taking the bait. Ling sneers as the pain in her arm intensifies, the human flesh peels away as her right arm rapidly mutates into something less human. She stares at her newly reconstructed arm in horror, it was a xenomorph’s arm. She could feel further changes as if something was growing beneath her skin. CLICK CLICK CLICK, Lee was out of ammo.

Ling’s mind was racing as alien urges polluted her thoughts. Survival, kill, flee! Ling snarled as she and the Newborn glared at each other. Both size each other up, looking for weakness in their adversaries defences. Ling charges towards the Newborn, taking advantage of her size difference. The newborn opened its jaws to their furthest extent as it bellowed an intermediation roar, flaying its tongue around. Ling snarled back as she charged straight towards the hulking albino hybrid.

The Newborn counter attacked but between its clumsy movements and Ling’s nimbleness; it failed to land a hit on her. Ling crouches before throwing her fist in the air, landing an uppercut into the Newborn’s jaw; the force of the punch dislodge her fingernails. However her overconfidence left her defense vulnerable, the Newborn bear hugs Ling while digging its claws into her. Ling snarls as the Newborn extends its long tongue around Ling’s face. The newborn squints its beady eyes down at her before retracting its tongue. BAM! The newborn releases Ling from its grasp, the white hybrid turns its attention back on to Genji.

“You're an inspiration for birth control” Genji shouted, his railgun smoking. “Dr. Chaolan, here's a new clip!” Genji tosses a fresh pistol clip to the scientist.

“Get away from my sister, you failure!” Chaolan bellowed as he continued to fire into the hybrid. The newborn’s brow furrows angrily, it lets out a high pitched whine before turning its gaze on to the girl. Ling slowly stood up, the Newborn backhanded the girl in the face, knocking out her teeth. The newborn turns back towards Chaolan.

“Fai-lure?” the Newborn uttered in a deep gurgling voice.

“Yes, you are a failure! Trash, a mere stepping stone!” Lee retorted.

“I, no failure… I, beautiful… Butterfly!” The newborn begins to make gurgling noises in attempts to chuckle. The newborn despite its large size took to the ceiling, outmaneuvering Genji’s railgun’s fire before plopping down behind the wraith. The newborn bites into Genji’s skull like an apple before throwing the lifeless corporate black-operative to the floor.

Ling’s eyes slowly open, she spits out blood and teeth as she slowly returns to a standing position. The pain in her mouth intensified as new sharper teeth began to replace the dislodge and missing human ones. Ling dropped to all fours like a xenomorph. Her dislodged fingernails are replaced with claws. Ling snarls at the newborn, the hybrid turns its attention back to the girl.
Ling sprints on all fours like a monkey, the Newborn couldn’t react fast enough as Ling leaped onto its shoulder. Ling bites into its neck while grasping a hold of the newborn’s flappy skin. The newborn angrily roars as it attempts to grab Ling by the neck. She kicks away the Newborn’s right hand, then its left hand. The hybrid charges into a computer terminal, Ling refuses to let go. The hybrid begins to scratch at her back, Ling ignores the pain. The newborn thrashes itself around to dislodge the girl from its neck. The Newborn makes one final attempt to pull her off, by doing so Ling rips out the Newborn’s juggler; spraying its acidic blood all over Ling’s body.
Ling falls on to the ground writhing in pain as the acidic eats away at her skin exposing her new form that has been growing underneath her skin.

“Ling!” Lee runs over to his sister’s melting human form, “Ling?”

Ling slowly rises from the blackened puddle that was once her skin. She mostly resembles an H-series xenomorph with its rusty brown coloration and fleshy exoskeleton; however she carried a few noticeable differences. She retained her gender characteristics, her face was more human than the newborn’s visage. The rest of her head was elongated like a shark’s fin. Ling hisses at her brother, Lee aims his pistol at her; hands shaking. He couldn’t tell if there was anything left of his sister in the creature’s red glaring eyes. Lingomorph slowly stands up right, she cracks her neck before approaching her brother. She lowers the gun away from her. The look in her eyes softened.

“Lee..what...has..happened..to...me?” she asked in a raspy voice.

“It will be alright sis, it will be alright” Lee hugged his sister.

“I... feel... strange…, can…. We… go… home?” she struggled with her words, her tongue felt alien to her.

“Yes” Lee stared at what was left of Genji, Lee took what he could off the dead wraith. “C’mon sis, we need to leave this facility”

CHAPTER 23: THE LOST SOUL

Asuka, Emili, and Tyrone detect something on their motion tracker. It was a single blip and it was heading towards them. The three lost souls aimed their weapons at it.

“Hey don’t shoot it's me,” says Nikita.

The Lost Souls immediately salute the senior officer.

“We don’t have much time, lost souls. The situation is dire, we must evacuate immediately” Nikita urged 

“Um permission to speak freely, ma’am?” Asuka raised her hand.

Youma slowly approached the oomens before back away into the adjacent hallway. Eavesdropping on the oomen intently.

“What is it, Kazama?” Nikita could barely hold in her frustration. 

“Where is Team Leader Hendrickson?” Asuka asked.

“Dead, Dr. Chaolan killed him. The man is deranged, he means to start another Earth War, starting with his new hybrid army. Let’s go” Nikita pointed down the corridor.

“What about Rizal and Blagovich?” Asuka asked.

“What about them?” Nikita squints her eyes at the Lost Soul.

“We need to get them,” Asuka suggested.

“Leave them, they are none of our concern” Nikita replied cold bloodedly, “Now let’s go” Nikita ordered as she heads down the opposite corridor, she then stops to turn around. “What's the matter with you rookies?”

“We may be Lost Souls but one of the core tenets of being a Wraith is to never leave anyone behind, both to safeguard our secret technologies and the wellbeing of our agents. You violate this tenet by leaving behind Rizal and Blagovich” Asuka turns around heading towards the corridor heading to the hangar bay.

“Your funeral, kid” Nikita snorted.

Emili and Tyrone start to follow Asuka shortly afterwards.

“Fine, have it your way… that’s just five less targets I have to deal with” Nikita muttered under her breath.

Meanwhile at the starport the Xenomorphs surround the shuttle containing Blagovich and Rizal. A Large Rhino-spawned Xenomorph violently pushes against the shuttle, rocking the occupants within the spacecraft. The sound of pulse rifle rife filled the hangar as the H-lab Scientists, their Xenoborgs, and Colonial Marine entourage began cutting through the pure-strains numbers. Asuka and her lost souls then arrive at the starport, the body of Dr. Kadinsky was hanging above the doorway. His skinless frame was still dripping with blood. Emili screamed bloody murder, Tyrone was taken a back, while Asuka averted her eyes from the sight of the body. The xenomorphs avoiding the marines and xenoborgs quickly turned their gazes to the Lost Souls.

“Oh no, not good,” Tyrone comments.

Asuka readies her ancestor’s sword, “Looks like were going to have fight away through”

Emili turns her head towards Asuka, “Fighting with an antique piece, could you be any more impoverished?” Emili pulls out her ceramic blade katana.

“Hey, ever heard of the saying, the old ways are better?” Asuka stated.

“If they were better then how come the new ways always replace the old?” Emili makes a witty retort.

“Just shut up and let's kill some xenomorphs!” Asuka retorted back as she activated her collapsed helmet to uncollapsed. Emili and Tyrone do the same thing.

Several runners leap at Asuka and Emili, the two lost souls effectively sliced them to bits, their nanoarmor protecting them from the acid blood. A tailess xenomorph warrior leaps down from the ceiling onto Emili. Asuka charges into the warrior full of zeal, she shoves her ancestral sword into the alien’s ribcage. The warrior hisses, Emili rolls out of the way as Asuka pulls her blade downwards; spilling the xenomorph’s guts onto the floor. The warrior collapses on top of its own guts before dying. Tyrone blasts apart many of the xenomorphs in the distance with his railgun as Emili and Asuka slice threw any xenomorph dumb enough to get in their way. Emili’s ceramic blade begins to corrode from the acid blood, forcing the blonde haired lost soul to use her railgun. 

A Gorilla spawned Xenomorph charges towards the lost souls, accompanied by a boar spawned xenomorph, a panther-spawned xenomorph, a cattle-spawned xenomorph, a rhino spawned xenomorph, a snake-like xenomorph, a mantis-like xenomorph and a scorpion-like xenomorph.

“Run!” Asuka shouted as she sheaths her sword, she pulls out her railgun as she begins opening fire on the mantis-like Xenomorph Graspers. It retreats into the air with its nimble bug-like wings. The spiked warrior-like scorpioid spawned Xenomorph Marauder charged at the Lost Souls full of zeal. The lost souls double timed their movement speed as they reached the transport shuttle, a scientist carrying a railgun accompanied by a person wearing an enclosed face spacesuit. The scientist matched the description of Dr. Lee Chaolan, but the other one they didn’t recognise. The shuttle bay doors open as Blagojevich arms the ship’s rear sentry mounted turrets and Rizal runs down the ramp shooting at the charging xenomorphs.

“Get inside! All five of you, now!” Josie Rizal shouted as she shot down the flying Grasper, the mantis-like xenomorphs collided into the metal floor, its carapace popping like a squashed grape. A quadrupedal short tailed xenomorph with a massive head comes charging towards the Lost Souls. It gains on Tyrone, the xenomorph hisses as it jerks its head downwards. On its cranium large orange spines flare up like a lionfish. Rizal aims her railgun at the Xenomorph Thrasher, she inhales as it takes the shot; BAM! The Xenomorph Thrasher loses its footing as it topples over, hurt but not yet dead.

The rear sentry turrets suddenly spring to life as a hail of gunfire lays  suppressing fire on the xenomorphs. The larger xenomorphs are forced into retreat, while the smaller ones are torn to shreds. Dr. Chaolan, Ling, and the losts soul quickly board the transport ship. Asuka suddenly finds herself falling to the floor, as if something big shoved her out of its way. Asuka quickly turns to face the closing doors, only for a Xenomorph Marauder that was perched on the roof of the ship, attempting to climb in through the bay doors. Emili throws her ceramic blade katana at the marauder, the sword impales it through its chests, the momentum carries it to the pavement. Dr. Lee Chaolan quickly races over to the ship’s ****pit, flipping on the gizmos and switches. The sentry cannons quickly retract as the rotating engines turn downwards, a pack of hungry xenomorphs begin surrounding the ship. He sits in the pilot seat as he mans the controls.

The fleeing dropship's reflections gleaned off the xenomorph’s shiny domed heads. The xenomorphs collectively now turn their attention to the large transport ship. The large booster engines ignite the ground surrounding its hull, setting the xenomorphs surrounding the ship ablaze. The fleeing ships quickly escape the planet’s atmosphere.

“Finally we made it” Asuka sighs, “Wait” she turns her head towards the ****pit door “Who’s flying the ship?” The door slides open as a man with bleached white hair in his late 20’s walks out.

“That would be me, Dr. Lee Chaolan” Lee introduced himself, “I assume you work for the company as well?”

Asuka notices he has Hendrickson’s Railgun in his hand, she instinctively raises her weapon up, Lee does so in kind; the others follow suit “Planning on using that on us?” Asuka sneers.

“If I have too, yeah” Lee retorted, “I just want to ask a few questions, that's all”

“Yeah, I have some questions for you too,” Asuka hissed.

“First, why did Weyland-Yutani send out six wraiths to sabotage our research center?” Lee asked.

“We had orders to release a small contingent of xenomorphs into the facility, our commanding officer said it was to test out the K-series and the H-series capabilities. The order didn’t make sense to us, either” Asuka explained.

“Idiots” he said under his breath while making a sideways glance, “Okay, your turn to ask questions”

“Alright, where is our commanding officer? Did you kill him for his Rifle?! Tell me why are you trying to decieve us! I heard you want to overthrow the company, well your mission clearly has failed”

“Okay let me explain. I didn’t kill your commanding officer, I have proof”

“Proof, you say. Well, let's see it!”

“Fortunately I am a paranoid bastard, I always record my visitor visits” he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a remote-like device. A motion image appears on the way playing the recording of his last visit of Yamato-Hendrickson, Himself, and Silverman. He cuts the projected video after Silverman’s betrayal. 

“Silverman!” Asuka clenched her teeth, she had a sneaking suspicion something wasn’t right with that woman.

“Of course, you're not showing us the full story” Emili started talking as Asuka was deep in her thoughts.

“Huh?” Asuka turned her gaze to Emili.

“How did you survive after being attacked by your own creation, on top of that who was that person you brought on your ship?” Emili asked.

“Hmm, no fair, you asked more questions than me,” Lee joked. His expression becomes serious,”Alright but let me ask you something first ..” The ship rumbles, the ship blares out its warning.

“Detecting a UA military vessel, designated conestoga class troop transporter” the computer informs them as the USS Bayleenberg hovers above the transport ships. The dropships enter the conestoga's dropship bay however the Chaolan’s transporter ship was too big to fit.

“Receiving incoming transmission” the computer states.

“This is the USS Bayleenberg, state your name, loyalty, and business?”

“I am Dr. Lee Chaolan of the Weyland Yutani Corporation Bioweapons Division, we wish to dock with the USS Bayleenberg”

“Your ship’s caliber is incompatible with our docking bay, however you may dock at one of our emergency docking ports. Make it spiffy, the enemy ships will be upon us soon”

“The enemy?” Lee asked.

Several UPP IFFs appear on the ship’s radar. The Bayleenberg begins opening fire on the enemy ships. The hornets mushroom up after being struck by the Bayleenberg's weapons before exploding. The Transport ship carefully rotates its engines as it hooks on to the aft end of the Bayleenberg, connecting its emergency escape door with the bayleenberg’s emergency docking port.

“Bayleenberg, why aren’t retreating?” Lee asks.

“We are unable, our orders are to hold out until reinforcements arrive to secure this sector” The synthetic replies.

“Seriously?!” Lee exclaimed.

“One moment,” the Bayleenberg’s synthetic ceased the transmission.

The synthetic reconnects back, “We have received new orders, we will evacuate to a safe system. Please stand-by”

The Bayleenberg and Lee’s transport ship jump into FTL, abandoning the planet Fiorina “Fury” 161 and its system to the UPP occupation. The Bayleenberg passes by four star systems on its long wayward journey back to Gateway Station. A week later...

Location: GJ1128 system

The Conestoga troop transporter is suddenly greeted by a black stealth ship. The black ship docks with the Bayleenberg. The ship’s computers were being hacked from a remote location, the hackers read through all the ship’s database, it confirmed the Bayleenberg’s crew and marines were in hypersleep. Men in black storm through the empty halls of the military vessel, bearing the corporate logo of a bright sun emitting rays. CHIGUSA CORPORATION.

CHAPTER 24: THE TRUTH

Date: December 12th

Locale: Earth’s Moon (Luna), Oceanus Procellarum, Selena Junkyard

The void twists and bubbles as a small starcraft jumps into view, the Videl races across the void as it enters the moon’s lunar orbit. The Videl carefully guides itself closer to the lunar surface. The selena junkyard is the biggest junkyard on the moon, thousands of starships both new and old lie in the mare. The Videl skirts alongside a decommissioned conestoga troop transporter with a dismantled EEV laying next to it, large bold letters on the side of the decommissioned ship displaying “SALACO” The Videl passes through the exposed skeleton of the ship. The Videl slows down until it lands in the empty dropship bay.

The Videl’s ****pit cage slides open, the decompressed pressure and air escapes into the void. Valerie unbuckles herself from her seat as she floats in zero G. She glances at her flight-pressure suit’s wrist computer, the lights mounted on to her helmet flicker on. Valerie motioned herself to move deeper into the intact corridors. She glances over at one of the adjacent rooms, she spots a series of lockers. She gently grabs the hall frame as she floats into the locker room. She pans her lights across the room, she sees a series of open and closed lockers sporting the names of their owners. She pans her light over where the cryogenic pods once stood, in their place was a series of emergency tunnels leading to the Salaco’s EEV (Emergency Escape Vehicle). Valerie motions herself to one of these tunnels, she shines her head lights in the crevice, the EEV was missing. Valerie remembered seeing an EEV earlier, she shines her light away as she turns her lights towards the lockers.

“D. Hicks, B. Hudson,” she reads off the locker nameplates, “Oh yeah, this is an United America Military Vessel. Civilians wouldn’t get their own locker” Valerie said to herself. She glanced over at the corner, believing she saw something skitter on the ground. “My eyes are playing tricks on me, it's not like there would be xenomorphs hiding on a decommissioned ship. Somebody would have noticed it by now, besides it's not like a facehugger can do anything to me”

She pans her light over to a door entitled restroom. Valerie searches the restroom for clues, no luck, nothing but toilet paper and an electric screwdriver. She pans her light at the mirror, she notices the mirror was crooked. Valerie grabs the screwdriver and carefully removes the mirror off its hinges. There a small memory drive floated towards her. She grabs the drive and places it into the drive socket of her helmet. She taps her wrist computer to play back the first log.

“May 16th, 2179. Here we are again, or rather here I am again. Lv-426, Burke promised that if we ever encountered the alien again, that it would be destroyed. I cannot allow the company to get their hands on these things. The marines are in high spirits but I don’t think they fully grasps what we're up against, the xenomorph as Lieutenant Gorman calls them are not to be underestimated. This Ellen Ripley signing off” Valerie plays the next log.

“May 17th, 2179. We barely made it off the planet but thanks to the military’s android.. Bishop. We got off that god forsaken rock. Unfortunately, like my crew, Hudson, Drake, Vasquez, Apone, Weizerbowski, Ferro, Deritch, Frosty, Burke and the colonists are all dead. The remaining survivors are Hicks, Bishop, a girl named Newt and myself. We should be arriving at Gateway Station within a week if we are lucky” Valerie plays the next log.

“May 24th, 2179. We finally made it back to Earth. But I think I’ll remain behind, I don’t think the Company would be satisfied with our version of the truth and will more than likely be forced into silence. I won’t let that happen, I am preparing to leave as early as tomorrow. I hope Newt and Hicks will forgive me” Valerie plays the next log.

“November 11th, 2179. It's been months since I last logged in, I’ve been doing some digging on the Company. I hate being right, the company is investigating what happened on Lv-426 seven months ago. I must keep a low profile, I sure hope Hicks and Newt are safe” Valerie plays the next Log.

“July 29th, 2180. Back to this ****ty rock. Tomorrow I will be leading a small small team of saboteurs, my guess is that the Company will try and harvest the alien eggs. If I were to destroy the derelict, no, I must destroy the derelict, this is Ellen Ripley signing off” Valerie sighs as this was Ripley’s last log. She found additional information was on the drive, images of Lv-426 and the schematics of the corporate facilities.

Valerie begins to feel a sharp pain in her brain. When the pain subsides, she barely catches a glance of something moving in the shadows; it resembles a cigar shaped head of a xenomorph. She turns around, shining her light into the toilet stall, a xenomorph drone screams at her with its arms flared out. The drone lunges out at her in an embrace, Valerie shuts her eyes close as she screams at the creature’s deathly embrace. But she falls flat on her butt. She slowly opens her eyes to see the xenomorph has vanished into thin air. 

“It was just a hallucination, I seem to get them more frequently when I am alone in the dark… I am scared of the dark” Valerie says to herself as she floats down the corridors back to her starcraft, “I keep having these hallucinations, there has to be some kind of meaning behind it, right? Are the xenomorphs trying to communicate with me? Am I misunderstanding them? I must find Lieutenant Ripley, she would know the xenomorphs better than anyone”

She climbs aboard the Videl, quickly buckles herself in. She hallucinates a xenomorph warrior standing on top of her interceptor’s fuselage, Valerie quickly slides the glass cage closed, oxygen pressurizes the ****pit. The warrior proceeds to smash its head against the glass before disappearing; The Videl takes off.

Date: December 19th, 2230

Locale: Lv-426 Acheron

The Videl quickly makes it descendent below the thick clouds. Where Hadley’s Hope once stood was now a thriving industrialized complex, new atmosphere processors can be seen in the distance. Large Company Logos dotted the massive super structures. The iconic Yellow W and White Y of Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the blue hazmat logo of Lasalle Bionational Corporation, the red stylized G of Grant Corporation, the stylized golden S of Seegson Corporation, the yellow radiant sun of Chigusa Corporation and the stylized golden star-rays of Wal*Mart Corporation.

The Videl makes a sharp U-turn before landing at the starport. Valerie was greeted by momentary indifferent glances as Valerie left her starcraft. The workers sported the logos of their employers on their shoulders. The Lv-426 she last remembered from text books and the extranet 40 odd years ago was more or less a dead rock with a breathable atmosphere. Now it's covered in light vegetation of grasses and a few trees. Valerie passes under an arching complicated network of red pipelines suspended in the wiremesh skeletal supports of the building. An asian man sporting a small ponytail in a blue jumpsuit bearing the chigusa corporate logo is seen talking to an asian woman with a long ponytail in a black jumpsuit sporting the Weyland-Yutani Logo. Valerie snickers as the man gropes the girl’s butt before said man got a quick smack from the woman.

Valerie turns her attention to the outgoing elevator, an angry looking young male security guard with blonde spiky hair is accompanied by a shorter female security guard with short black hair followed by a large imposing hispanic man, a sleek asian man wearing glass, and a ditz looking redhead women in business attire. Valerie’s wrist computer flashes a blip on her map. She took the elevator down to the complex’s lower levels, the blip directs her to an old janitorial closest. She waves her wrist computer around the closest, only to discover another drive unit snuggly between the pages of a motion tracker operator’s manual. Valerie places the drive into her wrist computer, she heads back to her ship the Videl. “It's been 37 years since I’ve been a cyborg, it's only been the past 11 months that I managed to get up and do something with my life” Valerie pops the drive from her wrist computer into her ship’s computer, she plays the log.

Date: July 30th, 2180

Locale: Lv-426 Acheron

A civilian transport vessel resembling a light blue UD4L Cheyenne Dropship except with a more curviver build and lacking the missile pods and foldable wings. Ripley walks down from the ramp with her companions. Dave, the one of the best hackers from Earth. Steven, a teenage boy that is notorious for stealing things and small enough to escape in tight places. Kathy, the heart of the group and the resident explosive expert; and Chung the fat guy, good at talking his way out of trouble and has a cousin that works at Walmart. Ripley yawns as her team steps off the vessel in high spirits. Ripley stares up at the stormy sky, thinking how long the breathable atmosphere will last without the atmosphere processors. The group looked down from the hilltop at the assortment of abandoned medium  buildings surrounded by a perimeter wall that make up Hadley’s Hope. The power was on, didn’t the xenomorphs cut the power a year ago? Ripley thought. Kathy pulls out a pair of binoculars, she sees people wielding pulse rifles entering and leaving the colony complex. Their uniforms display the BioNat logo on their shoulders. The men’s faces were plastic looking and devoid of emotions.

“Umm Ripley, I see Combat Synthetics” Kathy warns.

“That would certainly explain the power, what else?” Ripley asks.

“They belong to BioNat Corp” Kathy replies.

“BioNat…” Ripley parroted.

A grey spacecraft flies overhead sporting the Chigusa logo alongside a white UD4L Dropship sporting the Weyland-Yutani logo and a round diesel truck-esque spaceship sporting the Wal*Mart logo.

“Looks like the corporations have been busy renovating this place” Ripley looks through Kathy’s binoculars.

Locale: Lv-426 Acheron, Haldey’s Hope

Ripley continue looking through the binoculars as the combat synthetics leave their post as they pursue the flying objects to its crash-site, she then spots a convoy of black M577 APCs sporting the Weyland-Yutani logo rolling down the pavement road within the colony complex before turning away down the main road towards the a series of jagged rocks. Ripley gives the signal to her companions to move out. The group gives the colony of hadley’s hope a wide berth as they traverse south around the twisted rocks formations that surround a dirt road. Ripley followed the APC convoy to its destination, the road led to a large hill covered in prefab buildings surrounding the derelict.

Surrounded by prefab modular structures, a massive horseshoe shaped ship was being excavated out of the great hill top. The derelict’s exterior was fittingly biomechanical in design considering its cargo. The forward part of the ship was out of view, the starboard apex of the ship’s “arms” was hammer-shaped with the port “arm” prong-shaped. The stern was located in the center of the arms, the convoy stopped no more than 150 meters away from the derelict alien spacecraft. The corporation had built a sally port over the derelict original three oval shaped entrances. The convoy parked at the parking lot, where a series of corporate-owned transport vehicles stood. The corporates don themselves in specialized pressure suits with a helmet made of an acid resistant alloy. 

“Quick, grab those suits” Ripley ordered.

“What are you planning, Ripley?” Kathy asked

“We were going to destroy that thing,” Ripley revealed.

Locale: Lv-426 Acheron, Derelict ship.

Ripley and her crew, dressed in Chigusa Pressure suits and grabbing their pickaxes, began their descent into the cargo chamber. From what they could see of the cargo chamber, it was heavily damaged from volcanic activity decades ago. BioNat, Chigusa, Weyland-Yutani, and Walmart employed miners digging through the volcanic rock and ship rubble trying to get to the xenomorph eggs beneath the debris. A miner’s pickaxe strikes what appears to be a cylindrical rock, the container shatters while releasing a plum of black fluids. The miners quickly drop their pickaxes as they retreat to the decontamination showers. One of the miners begins cursing after discovering his helmet had a crack in it. The black pathogen seeps through the stress fracture. The other miners stare at their coworker in horror as the pathogen seeps into his skin’s pores.

“Oh ****, he is infected!” one of the miners screams.

“Anathema” a scientist among the miners said to herself.

The infected miner began to feel something was crawling beneath his skin, a small tapeworm-like creature started worming its way out of his eyes. “Help me!” he starts panicking as he approaches his fellow miners. 

Ripley could hear the faint cries of the miners; however, by the time Ripley and her crew made it into the chamber, the miners and scientists were already dead. They were violently ripped out of their pressure suits and were eaten. The mutated miner was feeding on his latest kill, prolonging his inevitable death by Nocuous; a painful rapid decomposition of its entire body mass. The mutant turned its gaze towards Ripley and her companions, approaching it in the distance. The miner’s forehead bulged outwards, his nose sunken into face, eyes atrophy while his head swells inside of his helmet from the effects of the pathogen. His arms and legs stretch to double their original length, leaving his pressure suit in tathers. It quietly growls before dropping to all fours, fleeing out of sight.

Ripley, Dave, Kathy, Steven, and Chung avoided the bodies of the miners as they slowly made their way across the ruined cargo chamber. Cylindrical stone canisters laid broken on the far side of the chamber covered in tiny fungal pods, above it was a massive hole in the ceiling. Was it caused by the earthquake or from volcanic activity? Ripley wondered, best to avoid that area. There Ripley spotted an entrance way leading up. They were now in the ship’s cartography room. Lights beamed from the darkness onto Ripley and her crew.

“Oi, Chigusa Employees, what are you doing up here? This is a restricted area!” barked a Weyland-Yutani employee. Ripley looks away attempting to hide her face.

“Calm down Gibson, it's only some lost miners,” said an older man. From what can be seen of his face, he was about in his 50’s of fair skin complexion with streaks of grey running through his jet black hair. The weyland-yutani logo plastered on his shoulders and his helmet. He turns towards Ripley, “Why are you away from your posts?”

Chung approached the older man, “We came to call for help, our fellow miners got trapped in a cave in! We’ve tried to call for backup but our communications don’t work down here”

“Very well proceed back up top-side” the older man nodded before resuming his examination of the derelict computing device. He rubbed his fingers on some green residue before carefully sliding his fingers across the device’s grooves. The device comes to life. Gibson gives Ripley and her crew aggressive stares as he motioned his head for them to leave.

CHAPTER 25: THE INTRUDERS

Date: December 12th, 2230
Locale: Clanship Ti’amag’ai, Zeta Reticuli 2

A blood red yautja female with her dreads tied up in a top knot moves through the orange mist, the walls were made of reddish copper-like alloy. She looks up at her personal trophy room, several human skulls adorn her wall alongside several skulls belonging to the various castes of xenomorphs with the skull of their queen adoring the center mantle. Near the queen’s skull were the skulls of various dinosaurs accompanied by a massive human-like skull of an Engineer, the mobile plated skull of a death angel, the winged skull of the human-like nagaian, a few vaguely feline humanoid skulls of the navi, a toothed bird-like skull of a great leonopteryx and the hammerhead-like skull of a bioraptor. The four hundred year old huntress watches an old recording of her past hunt on Lv-426 “Acheron”

Date: July 30th, 2180
Locale: Clanship Ti’amag’ai, Zeta Reticuli 2

“Set’sun’de” another female called out to her, “Are we hunting oomens?”

Setsunde turns to the younger yautja, “Yes, little Y’ouma” she turns around to collect her hunting gear.

“These oomens are dangerously stupid, sister. They built settlements around mala’kak kainde amedha carriers,” Youma warns.

“Then don’t accompany me then,” she snorts at her sister, “Unlike you, I do not retreat from oomens” Setsunde chuckles.

“I’ll have you know, I have long since regained my honor” Youma raises her fist up to her mandibles

Setsunde cackles as she walks up to grab her sister’s shoulder before shaking it, “We hunt together, always remain brave” she said before walking off to the drop pods. Youma grabs her biomask and weapons as she follows her sister to the pods.

The cylindrical pods are fired like missiles from underneath the clanship’s “nose”. The two drop pods slice through Lv-426’s clouds, the pods' posterior region flare open into four petal-shaped wings to slow its descent while flying dangerously close over Haldey’s Hope catching the synthetic’s attention before crash landing.

Locale: Lv-426 Acheron, pod landing site.

The combat synthetics arrived at the drop-pods only to discover they were empty. The synthetics quickly lose interest in them. “Disturbance located. Contents, unallocated. Standing-by for further in-put com...” the lead combat synth is cut off by a swift beheading from a smart disk. White fluid sprays from his exposed severed neck. The other combat synth enters alert mode, its infrared sensors detect a heat source directly in front of itself.

“Intruder, murder-death kill protocal activated” the heat source its detecting quickly divides itself. The large one remained still while the smaller one was encroaching on its position at an alarming fast rate. The synthetic is blown apart by a hot blue plasmic explosion.

Youma retrieves her smartdisk as Setsunde examines the beheaded synthetic, curiously. She then glanced over at the messy remains of the other one. Setsunde switches her biomask’s vision to electro mode, the synthetic is somewhat still operational. She deploys her wrists blade and carefully guts the synthetic so she can study its anatomy further. Youma was growing impatient, she looked over her sister’s shoulder.

“What is that thing? An ooman?” Youma asked impatiently.

“This thing is more machine than ooman,” Setsunde replied.

“A machine-ooman?!” Youma said surprised.

“Yes, these oomens are becoming more and more like them with every passing century” Setsunde glances at the small silhouette of the derelict in the distance.

“If only had I not failed in my hunt centuries ago, the oomens would still be stuck on their homeworld” Youma clenches her fist.

“Agree, it was a stupid thing for you to do. Your failure centuries ago allowed our technology to fall into the hands of the oomens. Now that they mastered how to sail the stars since the last century, It is now only a matter of time before the oomens discover our homeworld”

“I will reclaim my honor in your eyes, sister,” Youma taps at her wrist computer, “With the mala’kak carrier in their possession, will history repeat itself? Will the oomens follow in their footsteps? The kainde amedha were once numerous in the great dark”

Setsunde glances back at her sister, clicking her mandibles in contemplation. Shen then shrugged, before placing her hands on her hips, “The kainde amedha were once numerous, until we learned how to sail the stars. Let’s go now, the hunt begins”

Locale: Lv-426 Acheron, Derelict Site.

Two shimmering distortions climb on top of the derelict ship hull. The distortions submerge into the bollows of the ship’s top interior. The biomechanical architecte now surrounded the distortions, however human technology now lies scattered around the derelict control room. The distortions uncloak themselves as their yautja forms manifest from the fading cloaking field. Setsunde growls at the weathered oomen technology. The worn out weyland-yutani logos are plastered on the oomen equipment suggested to Setsunde this chamber hasn’t been revisited in years. Setsunde turns her gaze towards her sister Youma, gesturing to her to follow.
As they traverse deeper into the derelict ship, they enter the demolished payload room. Strange fungal pods had grown around the damaged pathogen canisters. The torn pale remains of the oomens scattered throughout the chamber gave Setsunde a chill down her spine. Setsunde stops her sister from venturing closer to the canisters.

“Halt, beware of the broken urns. The white death lays claim to this chamber” Setsunde glances over at a massive hole leading down to the egg chamber. The sounds of oomens were enough to get their attention, however the heavy concentration of the fungal pods surrounded the hole. Setsunde nodded her head to her sister as they pull out their arsenal of disk bombs. Setsunde flickered her wrist as she statgeically tosses the first couple of disk bomb into the epicenter of the chamber. The two yautja huntresses sprinted back to a safe distance as the payload chamber was soon engulfed in flames, shattering and burning the pathogen and the fungal pods.

Tremors could be felt throughout the derelict ship, with the payload chamber gone the derelict ship begins to sink further into its crater. Chambers once sealed were now opened, the ceiling of the egg chamber punched holes through the bottom of the derelict ship into an open natural rocky chasm below. Setsunde and Youma quickly cloaked themselves as not to alert their presence to the oomens. It didn’t take long before the oomens doned in their pressure suits to investigate the damage. The oomens shined their flashlights into the new opening, they spotted thousands of leathery eggs aligning the natural rocky cave walls, ceiling, and floor. Underneath the eggs was a black webbing similar in appearance to the biomechanical walls of the derelict. Unlike the crushed egg remains in the derelict, these were fresh. Something moved within the dark chasm, something big…

Ripley slowly awakened covered in dirt and rock, she slowly pushed herself up to get her bearings straight. “Was that an explosion? We haven’t even setted the…”, Ripley heard gunfire echoing in the chamber below them, she quickly ran over to the others to wake them.
Gibson and the old man are seen double timing into the corridor within eyesight of Ripley. The old man was injured, suffering a minor head wound. His friend Gibson was holding a pulse rifle in his left hand while supporting the old man with his right.

“Chigusa workers… we are having a cave in…” Gibson shouted, “Take Professor Esienberg to safety” he hands the unconscious old man to Dave and Kathy while turning his weapon towards the corridor behind himself. “Tell the corporate office top-side, the situation here. Tell them we are having a code black...” a shimmering wave appeared behind Gibson. Gibson slowly turns around. The corporate guard is thrown off of his feet as he gets pinned to the wall; a spear materializes out of his wounded shoulder. “Run!” Gibson screamed.

The cloaked yautja flashed its mask’s eye optics; its tri-dot crosshairs target the old man. Gibson struggles to raise his Pulse Rifle at the shimmer. He squeezes off a few shots into the shimmer. Youma’s clocking device shorts out from a stray bullet. Green blood oozes from her wounds as she is knocked back by the gunfire. Youma slowly stood back up as she turned her head towards Gibson, shining her tridot target reticule onto him instead. A small plasma cannon mounted on her left shoulder comes to life as it rotates itself towards Gibson. A bright flash of light escapes from the shoulder cannon into a blue ball of plasmic energy. Gibson’s remains were liquefied from the intense heat, leaving nothing but the spear intact.
The attack causes another tremor; the walls begin to crack before snapping the floor sinks with half of the walls. Ripley, Youma, and Chung are claimed by the collapsed floor as they fall into the abyss. The others barely fled from the collapsing corridor.

Chung slowly wakes up in a dark natural cavern, the walls covered in broken debris of the alien ship and black resin. He tries to move but feels something sticky land on his head. Instinctively he looks up to see a large round bulbous gun metal grey organ hovering above his head. The organ was dripping with the same sticky substance. Chung continued to stare at the organ as it splits open into four petal-like lips, ten finger-like tendrils shoot out of the pink fleshy interior of the bulb organ into Chung’s helmet before pulling him off the ground into the bulb’s interior were a long pink fleshy tube dissolves the helmet’s visor before slipping its proboscis into his facial orifices. The petal lips clamp down on Chung’s head, the bulb organ holding him pulled him higher off the ground; the organ was the tail end of a much larger creature.

Ripley slowly regained consciousness, her body was partially buried by the debris. However she caught a glimpse of Chung’s assailant. The creature was roughly the size of a Xenomorph Queen. However it resembled more of the beast she had dispatched off the Nostromo’s lifeboat Narcissus but with a more pronounced forehead. However she recalled the creaturing having a stinger tail, not a bulbous appendage. She tried not to move or make a sound, the creature had to be 25 feet tall but she wasn’t sure. The creature released chung from its tail, the man fell to the floor bloated and pale. The creature retreated into the shadows. Ripley struggles to free herself from the rubble on her back and legs. She grunts and pants before crawling herself away from Chung, knowing full well what to expect.

A xenomorph warrior awakens from the dark recesses of the resin cavern, and watches Ripley intensely despite lacking visible eyes. It pushes itself out of its resin nest. Its tail swishes violently, it applies pressure into its legs. The xenomorph throws itself off the ceiling with its claws stretched out towards Ripley. A whipping sound caught the xenomorph off guard as it felt itself being redirected away from its prey. Its body was forced into curling up as it was ensnared by a yautja’s hunting net. The net pinned the xenomorph warrior to the adjacent wall; the net grew tighter and tighter till the alien was reduced to sliced up chunks.

Youma climb down from her vantage point to retrieve her net. She leaps away from her net as a large bulbous tail smashes into the ground where she was standing. The Ultramorph had returned. Youma targeted the massive xenomorph with her biomask’s targeting system. Her plasma caster shorts out, Youma glances at her damaged shoulder cannon before dodging the ultramorph’s tail.

Ripley slowly finds the strength to pick herself up, she glances over at the two aliens brawling each other. The second yautja huntress leaps down from the hole above onto the massive ultramorph. She glances back at Chung and notices his body was missing. Ripley spots a way out as she slowly climbs up the cavern rock face. The rocky cavern transitioned into the derelict ship’s interior as she climbed further up.
Ripley found herself in a massive chamber. In the room’s center a large orb hung above the floor. Small boomerang shaped objects fly pass Ripley, flashing their lights on her. The orb’s surface ripples like water; the orbs burst into a flood of bronze fluid submerging the entire chamber. Ripley was able to breath despite being submerged in the liquid. The boomerang objects illuminate, turning the entire chamber into a holographic theater.

The chamber now resembles a wheat-like field, where a large marble skin human-like being was harvesting his crop. An elder member of his species dressed in tan robes approached him, the farmer was a giant even among his own people; the elder held out a small orb-shaped device. The farmer kneeled before the elder as he graciously accepted the orb. The orb displayed images of his people’s enemies: technologically advanced roaches, green skin monkey-men, humanoid allosaurids, and centaur-like canines.
The chamber shifts to a jungle planet where Horseshoe-shaped ships resembling the derelict are seen departing from a massive drydock reflecting a similar architectural design of the derelict. The farmer was now dressed in a type of biosuit as he headed off to his ship. The farmer’s ship departs from the jungle planet. The farmer’s ship was forced out of FTL by a neutrino burst, rendering the ship’s systems offline. The farmer reactivated the power however he had to manually turn on the egg suppression fields. He opened the egg chamber main doors as he carefully traversed the rib-like structures; however due to his large size he slipped into one of the compartments. An ovomorph peeled open, a facehugger leaps onto the farmer’s face.
The chamber shifts to the farmer donned his flight helmet, it resembled that of the dead pilot from the derelict. He merges into his chair, he rapidly tugs on the controls. Transmitting a warning to his people. The farmer grunts in pain, knowing his end is near. He sends the transmission. His chest then erupts in a shower of blood. A chestburster worms its way out of the farmer. The derelict crash lands on a desolate planetoid orbiting a ringed gas giant. A fully mature Ultramorph burns a hole from the communications chamber into the egg chamber.

Ripley remains unconscious as she is carried out of the derelict by her crew via the elevator lift. Explosions can be heard from within the crashed alien ship as the two yautja huntresses began their trek back to the exit. Youma shrouds herself in her cloak as she climbs out of the derelict apex port. Setsunde turns her attention back towards their pursuers, the kainde amedha; the drones and warriors that accompanied the Ultramorph hissed in anticipation. Setsunde threw the last of her diskbombs towards the xenomorphs in the chambers below before following her sister out of the derelict. The huntresses leaps down from the massive alien ship. Youma glances back at the derelict as its remains begin slipping deeper into the crater. Sealing everything inside it.

Setsunde gestured to her sister to follow after tapping at her wrist computer. Setsunde zooms her biomask’s optics, she spotted the escaping oomens below. Setsunde taps at her wrist computer, the biomask vision shifts from blue to red. The oomens body heat seemingly vanished from sight and was replaced by the kainde amedha’s bioelectric signatures within Chung’s body, Setsunde was confused. It wasn’t shaped like a chestburster but rather an undeveloped facehugger, multiple undeveloped facehuggers.