"Steve Perry - Aliens 03 - The Female War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

The Female War
Aliens - Book 03
Steve Perry


1


Ripley felt the little girl's arms tighten around her neck as she slammed the lift button repeatedly.

The queen was almost certainly right behind them. They were going to die down here. The thought
filled her with a sudden dizzying wave of sickness and she hit the button again. They were going to die in
this hellish, humid, artificial pit on a crumbling planet, a big piece of which was itself about to be blown
into atomic dust.

"Come on, goddammit!"

She hiked the crying child up higher and looked back over her shoulder into the darkness. Steam
hissed from a ruptured pipe, adding a hot fog to the dankness of the alien-spittle covering the walls. She
could feel it coming, could almost hear the rapid steps of the approaching mother, even over the
screaming alarms and sirens. She had destroyed its children, hundreds of its deadly offspring, and she
had no doubt that it was on its way to rip her and the girl apart.

She looked up then, saw the bottom of the lift slowly descending, still a few floors up. Any second
now ...

From behind them came a piercing scream, inhuman, full of rage. Ripley instinctively clutched her
weapon tighter and ran to the ladder attached to the wall; maybe they could catch the elevator on the
next level up. "Hold on to me!" she shouted.

And then she was there, like the others but larger, swollen even if no longer gravid.

The queen had a huge crown, a comb of glossy black that swept up and back from her misshapen
head. A second set of arms, smaller, jutted from her chest. ItтАФsheтАФmoved slowly toward them from
around the corner a few meters away, hissing and drooling.

Ripley backed away; the girl tightened her small, sweaty hands in a finger lock to keep from falling.

The lift, it was here!

Ripley spun.

The door opened, the mesh gate slid away, and they jumped in. Ripley slapped the control button
more frantically than beforeтАФ
 The queen ran toward themтАФ

The wire gate closed ...

Shut a second before the alien got there.