405 WORLDBREAKER PART FOUR

The plan with the colonial marines went off without a problem. The heavy weapons squad remained in a safe area and the female lieutenant led the rest of her people inside the main reactor facility. The shotguns worked great, as did the seismic detectors, so none of the aliens could sneak up on them.

There weren't many of them, because the infestation was only just starting. The queen alien wasn't very large, either. She was just getting into a good rhythm of birthing eggs and the setup was only in a small area. Six eggs were within touching distance of the security personnel that had been captured and all of them were empty.

“Call it in to the med team.” The female lieutenant ordered the comms officer. “Please advise on what we need to do.”

The man relayed the message and it was quiet for a moment.

“Step back and keep the victims in range of your weapons and be prepared to fire without prejudice. There's no way to know when they had eggs implanted, so they could release aliens from their chests at any second.” Alan Ripley's voice responded. “I'll be right over to assess them and the danger to you.”

“Copy that.” The comms officer said and hung up.

“Spread out and cover them with two man teams.” The female lieutenant ordered and they did so. There was no chance the captives were going to run away or flee, not with how securely they were ensconced into the walls with that odd black chitinous resin.

A few minutes later, Alan ran up to them and nearly everyone gave him nods for hustling over so quickly. The female lieutenant avoided looking at him and he didn't hold it against her. He took out an odd device and ran it over the chest of the closest bound security personnel. It beeped at him and he nodded.

“Okay, we're here early enough.” Alan said and touched the victim and injected him with a needle full of something. “That should get him vomiting up whatever is in his stomach.” He explained and did the same to each of the captives and looked down at the empty eggshells. “Is this all of them?”

One of the corporals shook his head and pointed to the far end of the hallway.

Alan looked where he pointed and there was a clutch of twenty more eggs and a barely six foot tall alien queen was laying another one. “On second thought, she might not get pissed if there's only this many eggs. She won't be as invested in their survival with the nest so small.”

“What will she do?” The same corporal asked.

“She'll probably flee from a superior foe until she's older and stronger.” Alan answered. “Unless she thinks she can take us out.” He said and nodded at the seismic detector. “Does she know you took care of the rest already?”

“No, she hasn't reacted to us at all.” The female lieutenant responded.

“Good. Then she won't react if I do this.” Alan said and went to the closest intact egg. He touched it with one hand and injected it with a different needle with the other, and the egg visibly changed color and then started to wilt and wither.

“What's that stuff?” PF1 Jenkins asked me.

“A hastily modified anti-serum derived from the creature's own DNA to break it down.” Alan said and injected the next egg. The soldiers watched as he did each egg and went right up to the queen. He waited as she laid another egg before he touched it and injected it. It withered before it finished being secured to the floor and now Alan was right next to the large deadly creature.

“Ripley!” The female lieutenant hissed in a whisper. “Step back!”

Instead of listening, Alan lightly touched the small birthing tube and nodded, then injected it. To everyone's surprise, the alien queen didn't react to him touching what they thought was a very sensitive place. It's nearly solid black carapace quickly changed to a dull grey before their eyes and then seemed to ripple a little and sink into itself.

“What's happening to it?” Jenkins asked as he stepped up next to Alan.

“It's own acid blood is killing it as it changes from acidic to a base compound.” Alan explained. “Instead of what her body is supposed to have inside to keep it alive, it's being converted into salt and water.”

They all watched as the thing stumbled and shook, then it collapsed and the overly large head hit the floor and broke open to reveal the partially dissolved goo inside. It didn't take long for it to crumble and the dangerous blood became fully inert.

“Okay, I think it's done.” Alan said and used his boot to lightly kick the body. It broke apart and he nodded. “Yep, that's got it.”

The female lieutenant nodded at the result. “All right, people! Let's get the victims out of the wall and back to the medbay.”

Alan handed out a couple of crowbars from his backpack and the soldiers thanked him. As soon as the six victims were freed, they bent over and threw up a huge amount of fluids that looked like the inside of the creature's skull, then the malformed eggs came out.

“Lieutenant? If I can make a suggestion?” Alan asked and she motioned for him to continue. “Flamethrowers to cleanse the entire area.”

“Good idea. Henderson, Peters, have at it.” The female lieutenant ordered.

“Yessir!” The two men responded and walked over to the far end where the queen's body was and liberally poured fiery carnage onto the floor and walls. It burned easily and the two men smiled as they walked backwards and covered everything.

“Let's move, people!” The female lieutenant said and gave the hand signs for retreat and march. Six of them grabbed the victims to carry them and the rest formed a protective perimeter and started to march out of the hostile area at a steady pace. “Keep an eye on the detectors as we go.”

“Yes, sir!” One of the men said and did exactly that as the group made their way across the facility.

Alan Ripley stayed between the main group and the flamethrowers, just to ensure no one was too far away from someone else. It also gave the two men and their flames enough space and time to work.

They soon exited the place and the lieutenant called in for the fire suppressant system to activate and keep the fire from spreading or endangering the facility. The heavy weapons squad didn't put up their weapons as they joined in the march and the whole group went over to the main building and inside to the medbay.

The six victims were handed over to the medbay personnel and the marines were ordered to spread out and check the security station and the command center for any signs there were more aliens in the area. If even one was missed, they could be overrun before they could do anything about it.

The female lieutenant turned to ask Alan Ripley what he was going to do, now that his main job was done, and he wasn't there. She didn't ask anyone about where he went and instead made her way to the command center to report the successful mission and used the comms station to relay that to the ship's captain and crew.

*

It took a few minutes to find the containment cells, since nothing in the base was marked for convenience. Once I did find them, I met with Newt's mother and talked to her through the intercom as I plucked the information I needed from her head. I told her the infestation had been taken care of and that there was no longer a worry of aliens overrunning the base.

The woman started crying and hugged her kids. Her daughter Newt gave me a sad look. I shook my head and she nodded as she hugged her mom. That little exchange let her know her dad was not coming back. Heck, I didn't even know what they did with the body. The details weren't in the medical database and I didn't want to question the medbay personnel about it, because if they followed proper protocol, they already cremated it.

I left there and made my way to the vehicle bay. There were several crawler machines, most with tires and some with tracks. None of them could fly, though. I copied a few of them anyway and stored them, just like I did with the dropship and APC, and I went out the side door and outside. Thanks to the woman's memories, she clearly remembered the route they took to reach the alien ship and I flew up into the air and in the right direction.

Because I was going straight there, it didn't take nearly as long and I saw several abandoned crawlers outside the thing. That explained why there were so many lesser aliens, even though the queen was only young. The aliens had been working hard to build up as quickly as they had. You could almost respect their work ethic if them breeding so fast wasn't such a horrible thing to have happen.

I didn't try to copy the alien ship, because it was still full of alien eggs. Oh, and possibly aliens as well. I had no idea how many people they had captured here or if they left any behind to guard the eggs. I took out a seismic detector and the soft beeping showed me that nothing was moving, so I hoped that would stay that way and entered the alien ship.

It didn't take long to find the hold and there really were thousands of eggs there. That meant the alien that burst out of the pilot had been a very busy queen to birth this many eggs before dying, however long ago that was. The eggs achieved a natural stasis until a living being was near them, then their biological processes took over and they 'woke' up to activate the facehugger to attack.

My perks and powers protected me from that, so I went to each egg and briefly touched them to contaminate them. I could have used the compound in a needle to counter them; but, a touch was all I really needed to end them and it was much faster.

They were all withered and dead an hour later and a blast of fiendfire burned them all to ash. I made my way up to the cockpit and saw the remains of the pilot and shook my head at the large hole in the thing's chest. It should have detonated the ship instead of letting itself suffer like that, then none of this would have happened.

It took another half an hour to search the rest of the ship and to clean the place up of alien residue. Once I did, I left the ship and thought about copying it, then stored it instead. I could copy it later when I wanted to work on the thing. That wasn't going to happen for a while, assuming I could find somewhere to do so.

Surprisingly, it didn't strain me or my inventory to have such a huge singular thing stored, which gave me ideas about the Daedalus and if it was of a similar size. Of course, copying the thing wasn't possible, not anywhere anyone else could see it. Plus, I would have to be outside of the thing to make a copy of it to then store it. It was a thought to keep in the back of my mind for now.

The obviously huge crater where the alien ship used to be, was a dead giveaway that the alien ship was gone. You couldn't tell if it left on its own or someone took it, though. I thought about reforming the landscape with my earth shaping power and shrugged. It wasn't like they were going to track the thing and the logs showed it was there and how long.

That thought had me chuckle, because I wouldn't have to alter the logs with the ship now missing, since the truth could be ignored by whomever saw it. Having the proof wasn't enough sometimes, so I did use my earth manipulation and transfiguration to reform the landscape to show an approximation of the shape, then made a cave inside and left it empty.

I spent a few minutes setting the crawlers into a chain and hooked them together, then used telekinesis to lift and carry them behind me until I reached near where the first relay beacon was. I set them down and entered the first one, started it up, and drove the thing across the beacon's scanner.

By the time I reached the base half an hour later, the base security personnel and the colonial marines were in full defense mode and were prepared to light me up with heavy weapon fire. I stopped a good distance away and stepped out of the lead vehicle and waved.

“I found these things when I was out for a walk.” I lied.

PF1 Jenkins chuckled. “Jesus, Ripley. You were giving us all heart attacks with five crawlers coming this way from where we knew no one was supposed to be.”

I laughed and didn't get back into the thing. “I had to go check out where the aliens supposedly came from and I didn't find anything.”

“I think we'll be the judge of that.” The female lieutenant said.

“Sure. Here's the coordinates.” I said and handed her a copy of the seismic detector. “The thing looked like a ship, that part was true.”

She took the device and handed it to the corporal next to her without looking at it. “You went AWOL without permission or telling anyone, Ripley.”

I smiled knowingly. “Considering I'm not part of the flight crew on the ship or enlisted in the colonial marines, why would you think I'm under the same restrictions as the people under your command?”

The woman's face flushed red at being reminded I wasn't under her authority.

“I had a copy of a colonist's homing beacon on me, just in case.” I said and held up the implant. “If anything happened to me, someone would have eventually found me... or my body.”

Jenkins laughed and clapped me on the back. “I'm glad you're back, because we're packing up and pulling out.”

“Already?” I asked and the female lieutenant nodded. “Any reason why?”

“We finished the mission and found the missing colonists. All that's left is to file the official reports.” She said and made the hand sign to wrap up. “Let's go, people.”

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do as the marines scrambled to pack up their equipment and supplies to transport back up to the ship.

“Head inside and rejoin the medical team.” The female lieutenant said to me. “You have some reports to file as well.”

I nodded and went back inside the base and into the medbay. The three security guards had already recovered from their ordeal and the three facehuggers in stasis pods were going to wither and die right after they were opened, because they had already implanted their singular eggs into hosts and had no other purpose. It's why I didn't mind letting them be taken as specimens, because they were worthless.

I wrote up my reports as the medical team packed everything up, then we boarded the shuttle and flew back up to the ship. All in all, I deemed the mission a success, because we had saved as many colonists as we could and then eliminated the entire threat before things devolved into something no one could handle.

The thing I did file a patent for, was a anti-acid spray that could be used on armor and equipment to make it immune to the alien blood if it splashed over any of it. Clothes would last a few moments longer than normal, since fabric naturally absorbed anything spilled on it. The best way to combat the aliens was to cover yourself from head to toe in armor and to shoot them at medium to long range.

I added both things to my report and sent it off to the captain and to the lieutenant of the colonial marines as soon as the shuttle landed in the hangar. The marine transport was already back and was being looked over by both the flight crew and the hangar's maintenance crew.

With my work done, I went to my quarters and had a shower, changed for bed, and went to sleep. It had been a really long day and I felt that the things I had done to change things, was enough to derail everything that happened afterwards. At least, I hoped so. It all depended on how the company reacted to having all their efforts wrecked by the very person they had shafted after a single incident.

I wouldn't find out until a few days later that the captain and marine lieutenant had been shocked at what I had amended to my official report. Who gives away the directions to make a revolutionary upgrade to their standard pulse rifle and then releases the recipe to the anti-acid spray for free? Me, of course. There was no point in keeping the benefits for myself and not allow all of the marines to use them.