Juvenile Queen

8.3.5 SW
20:33/21 SW-CP-Local Time
Crowning Point > Reactor > Maintenance Tunnels

Sharpey leaned close, scanning the map of the reactor with a finger, his eyes following. There it was, the freight elevator, situated not far down the hall from the external power output room. From his location, it was one of the fastest ways into the maintenance tunnels.

Now confident in the direction he needed to go, Saygin moved down the dim corridors, stopping at each intersection and peeking around the corners to scout the area ahead, vigilant to a heightened degree for any further signs of alien organisms. The way was clear.

Minutes later…

The freight elevator came to a stop. Sharpey waited, but the door didn’t immediately open, instead, it simply repeated a mechanical hum without fully retracting into the ceiling. Something was preventing the door from opening more than a few inches.

Sharpey knelt down and tried to peer under the gap, but it was dark and obscured. Slinging the incinerator to the side, he reached under the elevator door with both hands to force it up, but nearly instantly yanked them back at the feeling of something sticky on his gloves. They came back covered in a strange, translucent goo that was somehow both slick and tacky.

With little hesitation, Sharpey wiped the gunk on his pants and cracked a flare, promptly tossing it under the door, illuminating the area outside. Bright red-white flashed under the door into the lower eighth of the elevator.

Steeling himself for combat, Sharpey tried once more to lift the door and with some effort, he was able to force the elevator door upward and quickly rearm himself with the incinerator. He traced his tactical light left and right along the large cargo storage chamber ahead. It was hard to make out what he was seeing. The walls of the room were strangely shaped, like they had been carved or molded in irregular bulges, dips, and curvature. It was almost... organic. Like some kind of insect... hive...

Among the shapes, he was sure he could make out the form of a person’s slumped head and arms, hanging cocooned on the far wall. Another form, this one small and much more foreign, skittered and shifted down the wall, causing Flynn Sharpey to take a step back in surprise.

Suddenly, from the darkness beyond the flare on the west side of the chamber came a horrifying, unearthly shriek and a large form with a pronged, crested head slowly emerged.

With his eyes wide with fear and his voice little more than a gravelly whisper, Sharpey heard himself utter, “Jesus, what the fuck are YOU?”

As if in response, the towering creature hissed and whipped its bladed tail around to swipe at Sharpey, carving a glancing slice across his armor. Luckily, he was unharmed.

The adrenaline was pumping now.

“Oh! You’re toast, you fuckin’ cockroach!” he retorted with jittery excitement and he squeezed the trigger, emptying the entire canister of incinerator fuel on the alien.

It flailed and squealed a shrill cry of fear and pain as it caught fire and staggered backwards, retreating into an adjoining corridor. The smaller alien descended the wall and hissed, putting itself in front of its juvenile queen as if protecting it from Sharpey.

The fire that ignited the Queen had dwindled out, but the creature didn’t stop with its cries. It began to bray a series of strange calls as if it was calling for attention or... help? Was it trying to summon its drones back to their nest?

Coming close again, the juvenile queen lunged forward at Sharpey to take a bite but the distance was too far and the small xenomorph worker stood between the two of them.

Sharpey cursed the empty incinerator, threw it to the ground and retreated to the freight elevator arming himself instead with his grenade launcher.

“Chew on this!” Sharpey fired. With a thunk, the grenade shot out and Sharpey took cover in the left corner of the elevator where he punched the button for the ground level. He heard and felt the explosive force of the frag but the shrieking stopped.

As the door came slowly down, Sharpey gave one last glance before it closed to take him to safety. Past the light of the flare he no longer saw anything moving.

“…Fuck.” he breathed a sigh of relief.