The planetoid, now home to Base #3 under the
command of General Spears, was initially conceived as what people within the company often colloquially
referred to as a "Shake and Bake" colony, and a self-sustaining refuge. The atmosphere plant was never going to produce
a surface nitrogen-oxy mix thick enough so unaugmented humans could use it for breathing
purposes, unless they crawled in the bottoms of deep craters. True, the planetoid was big enough to hold
some gases down with its feeble gravity but the term “terraforming” was something
less than exact in this case. The civilian colony was here because there
were a vast number of underground caverns that could be sealed tight, filled with air,
and used either as shelter or to grow enough food to sustain a permanent population. Once the tiny world became self-supporting,
there were plenty of uses for it: expanded military bases, mining, an escape-proof prison. It was to those ends the terraformers worked. What the atmosphere plant produced was, save
for venting, pumped into the ground. General Spears commandeered the terraforming
colony to use as a test site. He wanted to to acclimate to human authority. With his specmiens at the ready, Spears commenced
his experiments, and had expendable human test subjects to fulfill these scientific
endeavours. He would learn the behavior of the Alien Queen,
and how she controls her army. An army, Spears believed, he could some day
command, and use against the xenomorphs plaguing the earth. The idea of having a xenomorph army appealed
greatly to Spears, and his overwhelming admiration of the species was no secret. "Goddamned efficient bastards," he describes
them as: "Just what a commander in the field needs. You could hatch your own army in a few months
and as long as one of ’em stayed alive, you could start over again when those got
killed." The colonists were told that a new strain
of virulent bacteria had been gound, a by-product of the nascent terraforming process. Spears used the ruse as an excuse to seal
the colonists into separate quarantined cells. Major Powell, who would go on to form an alliance
with Hicks, and share these details, noted that all of these experiments were recorded
in in the base logs, which commenced once the hosts were retrieved from the colony. Powell explains,
"There were one hundred sixty-eight civilian terraformers. Men, women, children. Spears gave them to the aliens. The air plant is automatic at this stage,
you see, so the people were… redundant.” "The lessons began almost immedaitely. He forced the queen to watch as he burned
its children. As the sessions continued, I'm not sure what
was more frightening, spears and his methods, or the fact that the alienqueeen seemed to
understand them. He waned to make the things into soldiers. He wanted them to follow orders like any other
grunt. There were misstepds along the way, but Spears
dealt with them as he dealt with any extraneous interference. He’s been feeding the experimental subjects
all kinds of chem the scientists say might have some effect on the things. We don’t know if it’s working or not. The body chemistry of these creatures is astounding. We’ve done some conditioning exercises with
the queen. She doesn’t appear particularly concerned
with the fate of individual drones—we’ve killed them and she doesn’t display distress
in any way that shows. But if we threaten or destroy any of her eggs,
she becomes very agitated. It seems to work. And the queen controls the drones—we aren’t
sure how, some kind of telepathic or extremely low frequency radiopathic waves, something. We’ve put a single human subject into a
chamber filled with alien drones, given him an egg and a blowtorch with which to threaten
it, the queen watching, and none of the aliens touched the man. The queen has learned to obey the general. Spears started training her like a dog. Used his cigar lighter. He’d have a trooper with a flamethrower
roast an egg while the queen watched. After she calmed down, he’d put a human
into the testing cage with her. When she went for the bait, he’d pop the
cigar lighter on and hold it next to another egg. The queen picked it up fast. You could leave a man in with her and a dozen
drones for hours and none of them would touch him. She’s not stupid, the queen. It seems odd, though, that the queen will
sacrifice the drones without a second thought but that she’ll obey Spears to protect the
eggs. But she controls the drones. Telepathically, empathically, we don’t have
the sophisticated gear here to be sure exactly how, but it isn’t with sound or odors or
any visual signals we can detect. We’ve run tests where the drone was a klick
away in an airtight chamber, no possible way it could see or hear the queen, and Spears
made it do what he wanted." Though Powell had witnessed this experimentation
first-hand, and had observed General Spears' behaviour in front of the xenomorph specimens,
muttering tom himself, uttering one clear word - "Perfection" - the true extent of the
general's obsession had not yet fully been comprehended. Perhaps the most disturbing result of these
experiments is that Spears himself believed to have been learning the queen's method to
telepathically command the hive. He looked over the specimens, practicing his
own mental will over them. He put his hands on the thick Plexiglas. It was cold to the touch. The alien inside didn’t move, but he imagined
it could feel him, was aware of him, even in its suspended state. "Mark me," Spears thought at it. "I’m your master. You live or die at my whim. Obey and live, disobey and die." In this series, I'm recounting the Earth War,
as depicted in the Aliens comics series. The accounts are explored as originally published,
despite certain names, locations, and other events having been altered over time. For more on the Earth War, you can check out
the Accounts of the Earth War playlist on the endscreen, and stay tuned for the latest
videos. As always, I'd like to Thank you very much
for watching. I really appreciate it, and If you enjoyed
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