The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3 Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Aliens™ Book I: Rogue

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Aliens™ Book II: The Labyrinth

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  Also Available from Titan Books

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS™ OMNIBUS

  VOLUME 1

  VOLUME 2

  VOLUME 3

  VOLUME 4 (JUNE 2017)

  VOLUME 5 (DECEMBER 2017)

  VOLUME 6 (JUNE 2018)

  VOLUME 7 (DECEMBER 2018)

  ALIENS: BUG HUNT (APRIL 2017)

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS VS. PREDATOR™ OMNIBUS

  THE COMPLETE PREDATOR™ OMNIBUS (JANUARY 2018)

  DON’T MISS A SINGLE INSTALLMENT OF THE RAGE WAR BY TIM LEBBON

  PREDATOR: INCURSION

  ALIEN™: INVASION

  ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: ARMAGEDDON

  READ ALL OF THE EXCITING ALIEN NOVELS FROM TITAN BOOKS

  ALIEN: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

  ALIEN: SEA OF SORROWS

  ALIEN: RIVER OF PAIN

  THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS

  ALIEN

  ALIENS

  ALIEN3

  ALIEN: RESURRECTION

  ALIEN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

  ALIEN: THE ARCHIVE

  ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY

  THE ART OF ALIEN: ISOLATION

  ALIEN NEXT DOOR

  ALIEN: THE SET PHOTOGRAPHY

  The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 3

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783299058

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783299065

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: December 2016

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ™ and © 1995, 1996, 2016 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  www.titanbooks.com

  For Steve Perry

  one of the finest writers of them all.

  1

  The dreams faded like mist on an early fall morning. Real dreams, the kind you can feel, taste, and know you’re there. She tried to hold the image of her two children, smiling, laughing. A park, green grass, swings, and happiness. Drake and Cass happy, swinging, up and down, up and down. She wanted to pull the feelings close, hold them against her chest like she would her children. Warm sunshine, the smell of freshly mowed grass, the sound of laughter, all mixed in the comforting feeling of home and family.

  Real dreams. Real memories.

  But dreams and memories nonetheless.

  The harder she tried to grasp the dream, the thinner, the more distant it became. She reached out for ten-year-old Drake, but his face lit up in playful laughter as he kept swinging and she couldn’t seem to catch him. She watched him swing until finally all the pleasant feelings were gone.

  The trees, the green grass, the park, were gone.

  Drake, his smile, his happiness, were gone.

  Cass was gone, replaced by the cold of the sleep chamber and the oily, metallic smell of the transport ship.

  Captain Joyce Palmer groaned and fingered the open button for her chamber. The hiss of escaping gas clouded the air for a moment with a blue frozen mist. She forced herself to sit up and swing her legs over the edge. Around her the machines of the transport vessel Caliban did their silent work. Slowly she looked around, afraid of what she might see after seven months. The control panels above each of the cold-sleep chambers all showed green and the auxiliary flight board at the front of the room was the same. Everything seemed normal and running, and she let the dread ease away much like the dream had done.

  She looked down at her bare legs and for just a moment she felt dizzy. She gripped the edge of the chamber with both hands and it passed quickly, just as it did every time she came out of the damn ice boxes. She hated cold sleep.

  She pulled in as large a breath as her lungs would allow and then shivered. The cold had invaded every part of her body and she hated it. She fought to bring back just a little of the feeling of the warm sunshine and the smell of the grass in the park. But the dream stayed just outside her grasp and finally she gave up, taking another deep breath and letting the shaking cold overwhelm her for a moment.

  Finally, as the shivering passed, she glanced up again at an auxiliary flight board that showed the status of the ship and its location. She studied it for a moment. All lights green. It appeared they were dropping out of Einsteinian Space right on schedule. No problems, at least that she could see.

  She took one more deep breath as beside her Deegan, her copilot, raised the lid on his sleep chamber. Beyond Deegan was the chamber in which their only passenger, Mr. Cray, still slept. The lights on his chamber were also still green and showing progress in the wake-up cycle.

  “You all right, boss?” Deegan said without sitting up, his voice hoarse and thick, like he sounded after a hard night of drinking.

  She just nodded and rubbed her face.

  Unlike her own thin and trim body, Deegan was more of a jellyfish out of water. While she watched her weight and worked out daily, he ate too much, drank too much, and never exercised. He had white, pasty skin and the cold sleep every trip really got to him. She told him that if he kept himself in better shape, it wouldn’t be so
bad, but he never listened.

  She slowly stood, the metal deck ice-cold under her bare feet. She quickly slipped on her sandals and then stretched, loosening sore muscles in her shoulders and back. She wore only brief bikini underwear and a light tank top. Goose bumps formed on her brown skin as she fought to loosen the muscles and shake the chill from the cold sleep. Even though she was in the best condition she could maintain, it would still take her hours, even after a long hot shower and a half hour of exercise to fully get beyond the chill. That was her pattern after cold sleep. It never seemed to vary so she might as well get it started.

  She glanced again at the flight board. They were six hours out from Charon Base. Just the thought of that name gave her chills. She hated it there almost more than she hated cold sleep. She sighed. “Last trip,” she promised herself under her breath. She had more than enough time to take an extra hot shower after exercising. She had the feeling she was going to need it.

  She gathered up her brown cloth slacks, brown vest, and the Harley-Davidson baseball cap that held her long black hair out of her face. Then she moved over and looked down through the cover of the sleep chamber at Mr. Cray. He was on his back, clad only in his boxer shorts. He looked to be in good shape, with strong chest and arm muscles and a trim waist. His head lolled slightly to one side and his mouth was partially open. Her guess was that in normal sleep he snored. She caught herself hoping she would get the chance to find out.

  “Deegan,” she said, patting the lid of Cray’s chamber. “Make sure our guest gets up. We don’t want him asleep for the big meeting with Professor Kleist.” With a final glance at his solid chest and the bulge in his boxer shorts, she headed toward her cabin and her wonderfully warm shower.

  Behind her she heard Deegan moan, “Yes, boss.” Then there was an even louder moan as he sat up.

  * * *

  On Charon Base, in a small wood and metal-lined corridor carved out of solid rock years earlier by prisoners, five Marines in full battle armor gathered. Helmets locked on, faceplates up, automatic Kramer rifles slung over shoulders. Taser Web rifles in their hands, they looked like they were ready to go into a war.

  And that’s exactly what they were preparing to do.

  The corridor dead-ended into a metal, airlock-style door. The white plates of the battle armor contrasted sharply with the brown carpet on the floor and the gray steel of the airlock. The corridor had a slight smell of sweat and fear as it did before any mission.

  Sergeant Green, not the tallest of the five Marines, but by far the largest and most powerful in shoulder width and the huge size of his arms, waited until all were silent before he gave them their mission. “We’re after an adult warrior, alive and intact. I know that stinks, but that’s the drill.”

  He made a point of looking around at the three men and Boone, the only woman left on his squad. No one answered and he smiled to himself. They didn’t like this shit any more than he did, but they would follow their orders and that was what he needed at the moment. He was following his orders, and they needed to follow theirs if they planned on getting out of this alive.

  He went on. “Taser Webs only. Kramers slung unless on my order. Is that understood?”

  Private McPhillips said, “Yes, sir,” softly, and no one else moved.

  “Dillon, the Sound Cannon ready?”

  “Warming up, sir. Just hope the thing works this time.”

  “Don’t we all,” Sergeant Green said. This was another stupid mission, but when the Professor said do something, they did it. That was their assignment no matter how bad or wrong it was. Or how many lives it cost them.

  “Let’s do it McPhillips, take the point. The rest of you keep it tight.”

  McPhillips turned and punched the open cycle on the airlock doors that divided the human areas of Charon Base from the alien hive. Thick, hot air blasted the Marines as McPhillips quickly checked both sides of the passage ahead and then slowly moved forward, checking above the door and the ceiling down the rock corridor.

  Charon Base was not much more than a large hunk of solid rock orbiting a class-three yellow star in an elliptical orbit. Originally it had been a government prison camp, used to hold the most dangerous criminals from Earth. The prisoners’ jobs were to dig more tunnels, expand the base continuously with useless tunnel after useless tunnel. The rock was honeycombed with tunnels fifteen, sometimes twenty levels deep. Most of the prisoners had died doing their “make-work” job.

  After the alien invasion of Earth and its recapture, the government didn’t have the money or the desire to ship prisoners out this far, so Z.C.T. Corporation bought Charon Base and started the top-secret Project Chimera.

  A section of the old tunnels were then sealed off from the rest of the base and five captured aliens and one queen were let loose to form the beginnings of a hive.

  Another small section near the surface was upgraded to the highest human living standards and top scientists from around the inhabited planets were hired and brought in, along with a platoon of government Marines to help deal with the bugs and safeguard the government interest.

  The rest of the tunnels were left, forgotten for the most part.

  Professor John Kleist was put in charge of finding as many ways as possible to make a profit from the aliens. From the acid blood to the royal jelly. Everything. But Professor Kleist had taken the project beyond even the corporation’s fondest dreams. And that progress had come at a high price, paid mostly by the lives of the Marines.

  Sergeant Green kicked in his suit’s air filters as the thick, rotting alien smell filled the air. Someone once described an alien hive’s odor as ten thousand rotten eggs frying in rancid grease. Green had done a hundred missions into hives in the war since he had heard that description. Without fail every time that smell hit him he thought of that image. And then thought it wasn’t a strong enough description. Not by far. Thank God for body armor and the filters.

  The five white-armor-covered Marines moved forward slowly as the corridor widened beyond the human section and became a large rock tunnel after about twenty meters. It felt to Green like an old train tunnel, only with higher ceilings.

  McPhillips, at point, stepped gingerly around puddles of alien slime, picking a path one careful step at a time. The acid slime coated the walls and dripped from the ceiling forming odd pockets of blackness. The Marines’ lanterns couldn’t penetrate those pockets. It was those pockets that were so dangerous. Aliens slept in those holes and could appear and strike without notice at lightning speed.

  “Stay alert,” Green said, his voice suddenly sounding hollow in his headset, even to his own ears.

  McPhillips, with the shorter Dillon right behind him, continued to pick a careful path through the mess. The new battle armor was good, but it wasn’t perfect. Enough of the acid and it could be eaten right through to the skin.

  Green glanced back at Choi and Boone as the airlock slid closed behind them. There was a reason Boone was the last surviving woman in his platoon. She was as tough as nails and damn near as fast as a bug on reaction time. She and the redheaded, skinny Choi were inseparable, both being from New York, both being about the same age. The men kidded them about making love like rabbits, but it never seemed to get to them. They just went right ahead and did it, at all times of the day or night.

  “Watch the walls,” he said to Boone, nodding his head to the right at some extra deep pockets of alien slime. “Choi, keep an eye on those side corridors. We don’t want one of the bastards getting in behind us.”

  “You got it, sir,” Choi said.

  Green took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His stomach was twisting up, but so far everything was standard.

  Another thirty slow, careful meters into the hive. Nothing but them moving. “I don’t want to go much farther into this,” Green said. Behind him the gray doors of the airlock seemed an impossible distance away. In front of him McPhillips stopped but didn’t turn around. “Dillon, any traces on the scanner?”


  “Blank as Choi’s brain,” Dillon said. “Nothing at all—”

  The scream filled Green’s headset. Oh, God. No! He had heard screams like that far too often over the years.

  Instinctively he dropped and spun, his rifle off his shoulder, up and aimed.

  “Boone! Cut it loose!” Choi’s cry echoed with Boone’s scream as the huge alien warrior dragged her up the wall toward its hole in the ceiling.

  Like the well-trained Marine that she was, Boone knew some tricks of her own. Kicking out with her boots at the alien’s head and arms, she twisted in the alien’s sharp claws.

  Right, then left, always moving.

  Twisting, trying to get an arm free from the alien’s grasp to get a shot at the bug’s arm or head, anything to get it to drop her.

  As if in the worst slow motion of a nightmare gone bad, Green watched in sick fascination, not daring to fire until he had a clear shot at the head or knees of the bug.

  Choi looked like he almost might have an open shot at the bug’s legs in a second.

  Boone twisted to aim her Taser Web at the bug’s head.

  She almost made it.

  But before she or Choi or anyone could get a shot off, the worst happened. Huge, saliva-filled outer jaws snapped open and the second alien jaws from deep in its throat shot through Boone’s armored helmet like it was so much tissue.

  Her final scream echoed and then died like someone had cut off the power on a stereo.

  Pieces of her helmet, face, and brains exploded over the corridor, raining down on everyone, covering Choi in his lover’s blood. Her body twitched in the alien’s grasp, still fighting, even though her head was gone.

  The alien’s smaller jaws retreated into its throat, pulling along the dome of Boone’s brains and face.

  “No!” Choi screamed. Like all of them he had his rifle unholstered, working for a shot at the alien that wouldn’t leave Boone covered in acid blood.

  But now that didn’t matter and before Green could even react, Choi fired. His shot hit the bug head-on in the body with a full charge.

  The bug exploded like a kid’s firecracker, raining acid down the walls and onto the corridor. Boone’s body dropped to the stone floor, one hand and arm of the alien still attached around her waist. She bounced once among the remains of the bug’s body and came to rest on her side, her back to the corridor, her hair filling the hole in the back of her helmet.