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

Gotta store these where we can find them and nobody will stumble across 'em."

Ripley smiled at Wilks.

"Okay, so maybe you aren't totally crazy," he said.



Ripley and Wilks walked toward Ripley's quarters. The smell of canned air seemed particularly
stale in this corridor, a metallic tang that you could almost taste.

Wilks thought about the conversation they'd just had with Les.

"Only a few of the dreamers seem to be linear-minded," Leslie had said, tapping the keys expertly
as she talked. "You know, math-science, left-brain types. Guys like you, Sarge, no imagination."

"Fuck you."

"You wish. Um, anyway, it stands to reason that they would have a better fix on charting a map. If
you'd told me what you were looking for last night, you could have saved yourselves a trip."

"Actually, we're making this up as we go along," Ripley said.

Even so, they had the names of people who could describe the alien's planet, six in all. Their details
were vague, but Leslie had cross-referenced a known-systems map and come up with several possible
locations. Ripley said she figured they could narrow it down if they could talk to the six.

This telepathy-empathy stuff was tricky, but it was what they had to work with. Wilks was still
willing to go along for the ride, given that something had turned up. Weird, but there it was.

"I thought we blew their goddamn planet out of space," Wilks said. "I dropped chain-linked nukes
that should have scraped the fucking surface clean."

"Doesn't matter," said Ripley. 'They spawn wherever they are, and a planet overrun is a planet
overrun."

"Yeah. But this one, wherever it is, appears to be the core. Makes me wonder how many places
are seeded ..." He trailed off, remembering the conversation with the old soldier in the bar.

"Something?" Ripley said.

"Yeah. A few days after Billie and I got here I met this old man at the bar, name of Crane. He was
ex-military and very drunk, wanted to buy every uniform in the place a drink. He rambled, glory days and
dead soldiers, shit like that, I didn't pay much attentionтАФuntil he started talking about the aliens. He
called them war toys; said that they were too good at surviving to be natural."
 Ripley turned to look at Wilks.

"Interesting," she said, considering for a minute. "Rapid procreative ability, acid blood,
vacuum-resistantтАФit would explain a hell of a lot if it were designed that way."