[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Prologueihuhe planet was not hell.It just looked and smellec^and tasted like it, ac-cording to the marines who had come there andraped it.Its denizens were not demons.They were far worse.The marines simply called it Hiveworld, al-though the navigators of hyperspace had an ob-scure numbered tag for it. They had come here, tothis blighted planet, and they had plundered it,stealing its queen mother.Without the psychic bonds of the ruler to guidethe lives of her minions, genetic drift occurred. Dif-ferent queens, pretenders to the throne, developedand flourished.All were killed by the most dominant of thebunch, a traditional creature who could have been2 DAVID BISCHOFFan identical twin to the queen mother who had per-ished in a nuclear blast in the Pacific Northwest ofEarth.Call them "black."Call her the "black queen mother."And the new group, the changelings.Call them "red," though they were not red. To acasual observer, they looked identical. But to the"blacks," through touch and smell and morphicfields, they were anathema. Strangers, aliens.Freaks that had to be destroyed.leader of this new brood, living against all cal-culable probability, was the "red" queen mother.Bearer of recessive genes, any sign of whose chro-mosomal changes had lyrought instant death in thehive before.The red queen mother and her minions fled. Inthe confusion of reorganization, they escaped andthey established a new hive far enough away tothrive.The red queen mother spawned, using the herdsof animals that roved this bleak planet.A new rival kingdom was created and for yearsthe kingdoms lived in peace.But each knew instinctively that the other hivewas the enemy, that this peace would not last long.And when war came, the principle weapons wouldbe in the numbers of warriors.And so the creatures bred .. . and bred .. - andbred.While others of their ilk were hunted under dif-ferent suns , . .li�he alien hive was exactly atHollywood and Vine. ^The god of the bugs alone knew if the sliming,sucking, skulking bastards knew the cultural signif-icance of the intersection they'd chosen. In truth,that section of La-La land wasn't exactly what it hadonce been, but then nothing in Los Angeles wasthese days. And the fact that they chose to infest theold creaking bank building, in what after all wascomparatively open territory testified to the fact thatthis batch's IQ seemed rather low.Still, thought Captain Alexandra Kozlowski asshe stood a block away from the sun-faded con-crete dialing the polarizing filter down on her face-plate against the grim and gritty southernCalifornia sun. You could count on each and everyone of the merciless mother-killers being just as4 BUII IISCIIFFmean and nasty and omery as the worst of the lasthive she'd exterminated for Uncle Sam.Who ya goin9 to call?Bug BustersiOddly enough, it felt good to be back in anE-sult, clunky helmet and all.She turned to the hunky lieutenant to her left,already sweating in his armor."Got your jock strap on tight, Lieutenant Mi-chaels?""You want to check?" The square jaws grinneddefiantly and the blue eyes crinkled."Maybe later." She winked and chinned her ra-dio. "Approaching hive zero zero nine, LA sector Bforty-seven." She chinned her radio off and gave asignificant look to the platoon under her com-mand: 69th platoon. AOE. Alien Occupation Erad-ication. The toughest soldiers in the biz. They alllooked back at her, smiles covering what she knewwas fear.A fear she felt in her- own heart.A fear every tame she got near the things."Roger, it's a go, Captain," crackled the com-mand voice over her radio. "Commence explor-atory and extermination. Backup targeted."m Captain Alexandra Kozlowski's humble opin-ion, the "backup" should have been all that was nec-essary. A couple of borer missiles with multi-Kpayloads, primed to go off when the sensors wereburied in alien hive musk. Just bum the bastards,erase them, destroy However, with the numbers ofaliens so significantly reduced on this, the eigh-teenth year following the Alien-Earth War, scientistsand private interests wanted carcasses, pickled eggs,ALIENS: GENOCIDE 5photographs, and any royal jelly that could bescarfed up.This meant Personal Delivery. Service with aDeath Grin. Rock and roll and kill.Well, it kept a lot of lads out of gangs, anywayThe other twenty members of this assault squadhad the same radios in their suits and heard thesame message, but Kozlowski gave the hand signalanyway, just to reinforce her command�and to as-sure herself of it as much as to remind her "bugguys."They rolled out. They were just foot soldiersmarching alongside the anchor vehicle, a Mark 23Access Tank. In this kind of operation, if youneeded extra ammo or just a quick ham sandwich,not to mention a little close-up heavy artillery, itwas nice to have a Big Metal Brother along. Themetal treads chewed up old concrete and wornmetal stars on the Walk of Fame as the troop ap-proached their objective. Almost immediately theybroke through the ribboned "perimeter" that hadbeen staked out when the authorities for what wasleft of Los Angeles had determined the existence ofthe hive in the old Bank of America Building. Basi-cally, this informed the natives that this was a dan-ger zone, that if they trespassed�no sweat off legalbacks�you were likely to become egg-fodder.Even here, fifty meters from the objective,Kozlowsld could see the hardened ooze of the hivestuff filling up the building's windows and frozendown the side."Hey, Koz!" said Lieutenant Michaels. "Why didthe bug cross the road?""To get to the other side, wreak havoc, kill andI DAViD B1SCHOFFspread its kind, and generally give 'life' a badname, you asshole," she barked back."You heard it before!""You know I hate jokes while I'm working.""just smart-ass remarks.""As long as they're mine, subordinate officer Mi-chaels."He glared at her and she started defiantly as theymarched along. It was a way they'd found theycould get up for a heavy mission like this. After-ward, when the acid got sluiced from their suitsand any wounds were mended, she and Michaelsalso had another tradition.Strip and hump each other*s sweaty bodies likebloody bunnies.Ain't love grand? thought Kozlowski as she lether keening hormones blend with adrenaline andregulation Army boosters for what brewed up to bea regular Kamikaze Cocktail. She and Michaelshad been an item for a year now, which in this Id-iot's Army was just about a lifetime. The favoritegag around the barracks was that if the captain andthe lieutenant ever got hitched and pregnant, thespawn would come charging out its birth parent (itwas still up in the air in the minds of the privatesas to who that would be) with a flamethrower inone hand, a missile launcher in the other�and agrenade in its mouth.As for Kozlowski, she was always just glad thatthey could spend any time together at all.They'd met in the service and he fit her like ahand in a glove. He was a couple years youngerthan her twenty-eight, an army brat who'd spenthis younger years first in a safe area on Earth, thenALIENS: GENOCIDE 7ofiworld after the evacuation . He was smooth andfit, a devotee of exercises and sports, a big blondpackage of sexuality that she never grew tired ofunwrapping. Captain Alex's muscles�and scars-had been earned in the field. Even before she'djoined the army she'd been battling the aliens. Herparents�landowners in Montana�had stayed andbattled the things. She'd lost her brothers to themonsters, her mother had died of a broken heart�and her pop . . . Well, her pop was a tangle of meangristle and bone and determination, eternallyguarding his ranch under the big blue sky againstthe critters from beyond.And Alex? Well, Alex was just a chip off the oldtendon, a small-breasted, big-hipped storm cloud ofa gal, feisty as an undefeated bantam-weightfighter. She had a brunette haircut from the Bowl-on-the-Head Salon, dark eyebrows like accentsover burning hazel eyes, and A pair of scars like pa-rentheses over a classically cut face. She couldfight or make love with equal abandon. She justwasn't sure which she liked better.A burnt stench was hanging over the area, mov-ing down from the Cahuenga Pass like a curse.Smog hung over the rest of the city like a stubbornspirit condemned to hell but staying put. Thesquad rolled along with practiced ease to the holethat was the principle entrance to the nest.Ten meters from the entrance, she chinned herradio and commanded a halt. "Okay Main thrustforce. Double line. Let's move it."However, before they could even assemble, thedefenders struck.Five large bugs, the sun gleaming sickly on their8 OHIO BISCHOFFcarapaces, their prehensile skeletal tails snappingbehind them, scuttled from the frontmost tunnel,just below the crooked sign that read BANK OF AMER-ICA."Jesus! Guns!" she cried, unstrapping her own.45mm blaster. "Rodriguez . . . Swivel and fire.Take cover!"Uke the crack team they were, the soldiers brokeranks and took positions as though this were all inthe plan. Even as Kozlowski lowered her rifle, theturreted guns of the tank angled and aimed. Ananosecond later, they spoke, hurling a frenziedhail of fire at the enemyKozlowski found her crosshairs, aligned them onthe closest alien�a twisted thing with a burned ordeformed forelimb�and squeezed off a charge.The stream of fiery energy tore off its ... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]