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

Ripley put the girl down, pointed her flamethrower at the creature, fired through the mesh. The fuel
was low; only thin and weak spurts of flame came out, but it was enough to stop the alien.

The queen snarled; thick streams of slime dripped from her open jaws. She held back.

The outer door closed.

Safe! They were safe!

The ride up was rough; explosions rocked the building, falling pieces of debris slammed into their
all-too-slowly-rising lift. But they made it to the flight deck.

As the outer door opened, a calm female voice informed them that they had two minutes to get the
minimum safe distance from the site, before the whole processing plant blew itself into nonexistence. They
ran together from the lift, andтАФ

Where the fuck was the ship?!

It was gone! Their ride had taken off; that goddamned machine, the android, had betrayed them!

Ripley screamed in anger, pulled the little girl toward her. Flames leaped all around, the building
rocked and shook with deafening noise ... and now, another sound. Ripley looked at the lifts.

Another elevator coming up.

Oh, no. It couldn't be. The queen couldn't know how to operate an elevator! She couldn't!

But she is smart, a little voice said inside Ripley's head. You saw her when she realized you were
going to burn her eggs, how she waved the drones off, kept them away from you. At first.

Ripley looked at her carbine. The counter said it was out of ammo. The flame-thrower taped to the
gun was also dry. She dropped the weapon, picked up the child, backed away.

The lift came to a stop, the door slid open. Ripley hugged the girl tightly.

"Close your eyes, baby," she said, and closed her own.



"Ripley? Are you okay?"

Ripley opened her eyes and looked at Billie, the young woman sitting across from her. Billie looked
concerned, a slight frown creasing her brow. Ripley liked her, had liked her in the first moment or so of
meetingтАФunusual. Trust was hard to come by these days, at least for her. But Billie's account of her
childhood rescue had stirred up some stories of Ripley's own....

"Yeah," she said, and then sighed. "Sorry. I got lost there for a minute. Anyway, the last thing I
really remember is settling into sleep after LV-426, me and one of the soldiers and a civilian, a little girl.
IтАФI guess the ship must have sustained some damage somewhere along the way. I don't remember
anything else. I woke up in a crowd of refugees on Earth six weeks ago, and they were on their way