I knew I would have to kill them. The ducts wormed through the ship, separated
by an intricate network of automatic interior doors. The aliens used similar tunnels to attack
us on Acheron. Someone pulled the loaders from the marines'
blasters. Probably that piece of shit Stephens. I saw what was left of him splattered down
in the loading bay. Saved ME the trouble. I couldn't imagine Stephens actually jettisoning
the loaders - he was too prudent for that. The intruders were calm, confident they were
in complete control. Despite so many warnings, Hicks and his marines
made a similar mistake on Acheron. It was a matter of perception. The aliens would have understood. The Benedict didn't belong to those bastards
in the loading bay. It belonged to ME. Newt was determined to do what she did best
- survive. After years of her dreams, she had felt a
connection with the Aliens. Whatever visited her during her long stretches
of sleep, and in the waking nightmare of Fieldcrest hospital, revealed to her at least some kind
of truth about their nature, and of herself. She was envious of their cold nature. She thought of Bueller, and the time they
spent together. No, she thought. Forget Bueller. Forget everything good. The Aliens didn't need love. Loneliness - fear - the concepts were meaningless
to them. They only knew death. It kept things simple. Inside the - Anthill - surviving members of
both Hicks and Massey's squads were facing against the planet's inhabitants. They were two hundred meters into the mound
when the first wave of aliens came at them. A dozen of the things, moving impossibly fast,
fangs bared, claws extended.Green beams flashed past him and burned limbs from bodies. Several of the things fell and skidded on
the ridged floor and others tangled with them. It was over in five seconds, and the twelve
attacking aliens lay burned or shattered, smoke rising where the blood touched the hive. Not that something that acidic could really
be called blood. Massey had been monitoring the situation,
weighing his options. Yes, this was much more challenging than he
had expected. Still, it was a minor setback. He had uploaded a raft of information about
the planet, and his primary mission, to keep the government from securing an alien specimen,
was accomplished. Should he continue this, or cut his losses
and go home? On the one hand, he’d done pretty much what
they wanted him to do—he could tell the company that the surface teams had been destroyed
by alien wildlife and they would shrug it off as nothing. The company had its specimen, another one
would only be backup. On the other hand, he hated the idea of even
a partial failure. Screw it. He set the lander to remote destruct. Hicks, helpless and strapped to a chair, could
only observe, and knew he was no longer necessary to Massey's mission. "The scientists will raise a fuss over the
destruction of inboard documentation. But they'll get over it." Massey said. "What about your men?" Hicks probed. “What about them? This game is being called on account of rain,”
he said. “Time to take my winnings and go home. So long, Hicks.” From behind him, a voice commanded to Drop
his weapon. Newt had the carbine aimed at the pirate’s
heart and if he made any sudden moves she was going to carve it out of him. Massey grinned. He looked like some of the psychotics Newt
had seen in the lockdown section of the hospital. “Well, well. What have we here? You the ship’s mascot?” “Stay real still." “So that explains the extra on the head
count. You can’t be one of those ugly marines,
you’re too pretty. Crew smuggle you onboard for fun and games,
maybe?” Hicks said, “Shoot him, Newt. Shoot him now!” The man glanced at Hicks. “Ah. Friend of yours, eh, Sergeant? You have nice taste.” He turned back toward Newt. Slid a half step toward her, hands outstretched
wide, trying to look harmless. “Another step and I punch your ticket,”
she said. “Come on. Sweet little thing like you? You don’t want to kill me. Think about what it would be like, being responsible
for the death of another human being. It’ll give you bad dreams, honey.” He slid another half step forward. Newt swallowed, her mouth dry. This man was a killer, she had seen the bodies
get spaced. And he had done something with Mitch. But his hands were in the air. Shooting somebody down like this, it was different
from thunking the android on the head. The Alien would have attacked. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I fire? It wasn't fair. I wanted to be just like them. God help me, I was only human. Newt shuffled back a step. “I’m telling you to stop right there.” Hicks managed to lever himself to his feet
by leaning against a bulkhead. “Newt, this guy is a murderer! You have to put him down! Shoot!” She glanced at Hicks. A mistake. As soon as her attention left the pirate,
he leapt. God, he was fast! Newt pulled the trigger on the carbine, but
he was already twisting, dropping under the line of her fire. Half a dozen rounds shattered a computer console,
the noise was awful, lights flickered as the power surged and shorted in the plugged console—
She tried to realign the weapon but too late. He hit her above the knees, and she did a
half flip forward and landed on her back— “Stupid bitch!” he said as he rolled up
and caught Newt by the shoulders. “Point a goddamn gun at me!” He snatched her from the floor and threw her
against the bulkhead. Newt went gray as her head slammed against
the wall. Even as she bounced off, he was on her, one
hand grabbing her shirt, the other slapping her face. “I don’t need a weapon, you stupid cunt,
I could tear your throat out with my fingers!” He slapped her again. Newt felt a tooth cut the inside of her lip. Blood sprayed from her mouth as he slapped
her the third time. He shoved her back against the wall, lifted
her feet clear of the deck by her shirt. Pulled his pistol from his holster. Grinned like a maniac. “But you're not worth the effort. You're nothing but a distraction. Christ, you remind me of my wife.” As he raised the gun to kill her, Newt saw
a blur behind him. She couldn’t stop her gasp. The pirate tried to turn, but she locked both
her hands around the wrist of the hand he held her with. It slowed him enough so that Hicks hit him
with one shoulder just above his hip. Newt felt her shirt tear as the pirate was
knocked away. She fell to the floor and scrabbled on all
fours. Toward the carbine where it had fallen. Five meters. Four. Three—
The pirate roared and Newt twisted enough to see him. He had lost his pistol, but he was up and
diving for it. Two meters to the carbine. One—
“I’ll kill both of you!” Hicks was sprawled on his side, pushing himself
along with only his left foot. Toward the pirate. Newt reached the carbine. Grabbed it. Boiled onto her back. Wouldn’t be time to get to her feet—
The pirate’s gun went off, but she was rolling and she felt the slug hit the deck where she
had just been. No time to aim. She pushed the gun out as if it were her fist
punching and pulled the trigger. The fire selector must have been jiggled when
the gun had fallen. It went off once. Newt, expecting full auto, couldn’t figure
it out. She held the trigger back, waiting for more
fire. Nothing. She’d have to let it go and pull it again,
she realized. Oh, fuck! But one was enough. The caseless 10mm round caught the pirate
just below the shoulder of his gun arm. Blew a hole through him. Newt saw him tumble, the gun falling from
his nerveless fingers. The entry wound was the size of her fingertip,
but when he fell she saw the exit wound, high on his back, was as big as her fist. The pistol slid two meters away from the fallen
man’s fingertips. He raised his head, saw the pistol, crawled
for it. Stretched his good hand out for it. Newt came up, carbine held ready, and jumped
for the pistol. Kicked it across the room. Pointed the carbine at the downed man. He rolled over onto his back. Blood poured from his wound, spreading under
his head in a coppery-smelling pool. “Stupid fucking bitch,” he said. He reached for something at his waist. “Don’t move!” “Fuck you.” He slid his left hand into a vertical slit
on his coverall over his right hip. She saw him smile as he gripped it. She squeezed the trigger. The explosion was loud in the enclosed room,
it lapped against the hard walls and splashed back at her. The smell of burnt propellant filled her nostrils. Her ears rang. The round hit him square in the mouth. Chopped out some front teeth and blew the
back of his head all over the deck and wall behind him. Whatever he had intended to do wasn’t ever
going to happen. She bent, tugged his hand out. He death-gripped a grenade. The safety cap had already been snapped up
and his thumb was on the detonate button. Carefully, Newt pried the grenade loose from
the dead man’s hand and closed the safety cap. He would have blown them all up, ruined the
control room, sent the ship spiraling down to burn in the atmosphere. Freed by Newt, Hicks ran to the com board. Looked at the screen. A bullet had shattered the projector. He couldn’t see how much time was left. He started tapping controls on the console,
swore, then moved to another screen. “What is it?” He shook his head. “I think it’s a bomb set on the APC. 1st Squad got loose. He was afraid they’d get to the APC and
come back.” “What about Mitch?” “Bueller? I don’t know.” “Call him! Find out!” The bomb had gone off, preventing any escape
from the planet. Hicks and Newt had to provide evac. We launched Massey's lander and began the
slow descent to the alien's homeworld. I could see Bueller over the ship's monitors. His face was reduced to an abstract blur-
tiny electric pulses of light and color. Hicks ignored the screens, lost in his dreams
of vengeance. At least he still had that. I had nothing. There were no dreams left for me. Just the stark reality of the Alien. The stark reality of death. Hicks dropped the lander just outside the
alien hive. Sand and dust danced around the ship like
some mocking, ethereal smoke- like phospherescent swirls of color flickering across the lander's
forward monitor. I think...it knew. I think it wanted to teach me a lesson about
the futility of love - the horror of trust....I could see it all. Another wave of monsters clattered toward
the squad, hissing as they moved. Bueller’s carbine rumbled, a giant tearing
heavy canvas, and the armor-piercing rounds punched through the bodies where they hit
straight on, ricocheted off when they struck at an angle, making sparks like flint on steel. The alien must have been waiting in the darkness
for some break in Bueller’s attention. It came clattering out, claws scraping and
digging into the rocky surface as it cleared the entrance, arms extended, teeth revealed
in a moray eel’s needle grin. Bueller twisted, swung the carbine around. Slipped on a loose piece of rock. Shifted, off balance, to his left. The carbine’s barrel dropped, just a hair,
as he fired. Fired, and missed. He tried to correct his aim, the thing was
almost on top of him and he only needed to pointshoot, but he was too slow. It crossed its hands, grabbed him, digging
one steel-hard claw into his ribs, the other on the opposite side, just under his hip. Talons bit deep. The carbine flew from Bueller’s grip. He tried to draw the slug pistol. The alien flexed muscles hidden under its
exo-skeleton, cords filled with power a score of times stronger than a man could manage. Bueller felt the pain burn through his waist,
a shattering bolt that short-circuited all his systems, filling him, like a sudden plunge
into molten aluminum. He managed a scream, then felt the unendurable
shock as— As the thing tore him in half at the waist. Newt saw the parts of Bueller fall. Saw his hips and legs fly one way, his upper
body another. Tumbling, and the white circulating fluid—not
red blood, white, white!—spraying like a milky fountain into the air under the alien
sun. Hicks watched the alien rip Bueller apart. He slapped the fire controls for the robot
guns trained on the mouth of the alien hive. He saw the edges of the entrance light with
tiny flashes as the 20mm expended uranium slugs chattered against the walls inside. Having a specific target, the robot gun hosed
it in bursts of twenty, S-shaped patterns from top to bottom, stopping a meter or so
short of the ground. The gunfire chopped the alien into pieces,
blowing the shattered parts back against the hive like a swat from a giant steel broom. The fire computer locked in the shape of the
alien and shut the gun down, waiting for more targets that looked like him. Newt screamed. She was looking at the viewer and it was dialed
up so she couldn’t miss what Bueller was. The ancillary nodes of his digestive system
hung from his torso; white polymer circulating fluid oozed over everything. Where a human would be soaked with blood and
painted bright crimson, Bueller was drenched in milky froth. Tubules, shunts, circulatory lines, all splayed
from the ruined android body. Newt screamed again, a wordless cry. Hicks knew then she’d never suspected. “Newt!” She kept yelling. “He’s alive,” Private Blake said over
the com. She hoisted the terribly wounded android onto
her back and crawled back to where the crewman lay. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” Newt said. Hicks lost it. “I tried to fucking warn you! I tried to keep you away from him! You wouldn’t listen to me! Yes, he’s an android. The whole platoon, all of them, they’re
all androids! Created for a mission like this. How do you think they managed to breathe that
thin air and keep going?” Newt stared at the screen, not blinking, not
moving. “They’re faster, stronger, cheaper than
we are to maintain. Some people didn’t like working with them,
so the new experimental models were made to pass for human. They eat, drink, piss, act, and even feel
like humans. They can hate, fear, love, just like we do. From the outside, even an expert can’t tell. Everything external looks just the same. But I guess you know that, don’t you?” Finally she turned to look at him. He could see her pain, it went all the way
to her core. She had fallen in love with an android, had
slept with him. For some people, that would be the same as
falling in love with a dog or a farm animal and having sex with it. When she spoke, her voice was as cold as deep
space. “Why didn’t you tell me, Hicks?” “I tried. You didn’t want to hear it.” “You never said anything about androids.” “By the time I realized I should, it was
too late. What was I supposed to say? You’re in love with an artificial person? He was born in a vat and put together like
a puzzle by a bunch of androtechs? You wouldn’t have believed it.” “You should have told me.” “Yeah, well, my life is full of things I
should have done and didn’t. This mission is screwed, and we’re leaving. The rest of it we sort out later.” Newt turned back to the screen. Blake and the crewman had what was left of
Bueller cradled between them and were approaching the APC at a quick jog. Behind them the mouth of the aliens’ nest
erupted with dozens of the things. The robot gun worked its deadly magic, hammering
the creatures with chunks of armor-piercing death, battering them to pieces; still, they
boiled forth like angry fire ants, ran into the wall of metal, and shattered against it. Dozens, scores, hundreds of them—they kept
coming. The robot gun was state of the art, it locked
on to the acquired targets, calculated for local gravity, windage, movement, then fired
efficiently and dispatched them. But no matter how efficient a weapon, it could
only live as long as it was fed. The last of the ammunition ran through the
electronic machinery. Hicks shook his head. Bad news. The APC had shot up all the ammunition it
carried. Nobody had figured a lot of air-to-air combat
would be happening on this mission. And the aliens kept bounding out of that damned
nest like giant black termites stoked on steroids and amphetamines. Must be fifty of them heading toward the ship,
despite all the ones the gun had blown away. More of the things climbed over the piled
bodies as he watched. Time to leave. Blake and the crewman and Bueller were only
fifty meters away from the ship. Hicks ordered the outer hatch open. Blake entered the cabin. She squatted and carefully eased Mitch onto
the deck. There was an aid kit on the wall, but Blake
passed it and pulled a plastic box from a cabinet instead. Of course. A human aid kit wouldn’t help. The crewman said, “Go, man, get us the hell
out of here!” Hicks was in the pilot’s seat. “Strap in,” he ordered. Only the crewman hustled to obey. Newt stood over Mitch. His eyes were closed. He ended at the waist and what spilled from
his torso was ugly to look upon. “Sit down, Newt!” She still didn’t move. Something slammed into the APC, hard enough
to jolt the vessel, to make it ring with the impact. “Shit!” the crewman said. More impacts. Three. Five. Ten of them. “They are all over us!” the crewman yelled. “Fuck ’em,” Hicks said. “We’re gone.” He punched a control. Nothing happened. “What the hell?” the crewman began. “One of them is blocking a thrust skirt
tube,” Hicks said. “The computer won’t fire it. I’ll have to go to manual—”
There came a screech as metal tore. “They’re digging through the hull,”
Newt said. “That’s impossible!” the crewman said. Another grinch! of metal being clawed by something
harder than it was. Hicks tapped controls. The APC shook, but lifted, wobbled a little,
but rose slowly. Went up a couple hundred meters, Newt could
see through the forward screens. “All right!” the crewman yelled. “We’re too heavy,” Hicks said. “We’ll have to shake the fuckers off—”
The ship lurched, dropped, twisting to port as though a heavy weight had landed on that
side. A siren began screaming from the control panel. Hicks worked frantically, hands dancing rapidly
back and forth. The APC began to level but it continued to
settle. “That’s the left repellor,” Hicks said. “Emergency brake-lock. Something is inside the housing. I can’t override.” Thumping continued on the hull, more squeals
as the metal bent or gave up the fight. It wouldn’t be long before the aliens clawed
their way in. Newt looked at the weapons Blake still carried. Hicks wouldn’t let the things take them
alive. It would be quick, if it came to that. So it didn’t matter what she was feeling
about Mitch. No. Nothing mattered. Her short and mostly unhappy time was about
to come to its end. Except for the few hours when she’d thought
Mitch was other than he turned out to be, it hadn’t been much of a life. Maybe she should tell him that, since they
were going to die. The ship thrummed, a sound unlike anything
Hicks had ever heard washed over them, vibrating every surface in the APC, battering at his
ears like padded pugil sticks. He dropped to his knees and clapped his hands
over his ears. He felt the vibration to his core; it made
the marrow in his bones hum. Abruptly the sound died. Hicks stood, shaken. What the hell had that been? “Listen,” Blake said. “I don’t hear anything,” the crewman
said. Hicks nodded. “That’s right. The aliens have stopped attacking us.” It was as quiet as an isolation chamber. They all looked at Hicks. “Let’s take a look, Blake.” Hicks took a couple of deep breaths, then
moved to the hatch. He held the carbine ready, Blake with her
rifle right behind him. The hatch went up. “Oh, man,” Blake said. Hicks was speechless. At least fifty of the aliens lay sprawled
on the ground around the ship. They looked… melted, as if all their edges had run together. Dead, Hicks didn’t doubt it for a second. That was pretty incredible. But what he saw standing a dozen meters away
was even more incredible. “What the hell is that?” Blake said. Hicks just stared. Some kind of suited figure stood there. It was easily seven or eight meters tall,
bipedal, with a clear helmet on the E-suit it wore. Hicks could see the thing’s face behind
the bubble covering, and it looked like nothing so much as an elephant might appear, were
it to evolve to a two-legged animal. It had pinkish-gray skin, a ridged nose or
maybe a trunk that vanished in a long chamber down the front of the suit, with what seemed
to be a pair of small tentacles, one to either side of the larger trunk. It had a short extension of the suit behind
it, and Hicks guessed that it had a tail in the tube, shaped like a skinny pyramid. A closer look and Hicks realized the thing
wasn’t exactly standing. The heavy boots it wore had a central split,
as if the thing had hooves, and they didn’t quite touch the ground. It was actually floating a couple of centimeters
above the surface. The thing held a device in its gauntleted
hands and Hicks would bet ten years pay against a toenail clipping it was some kind of weapon. It was close enough so he could see its eyes. The pupils were shaped like crosses, wider
than they were high. They looked dead, those eyes. They were eyes that Newt seemed to recognize. Unable to explain why, she knew who these
beings were, where they had come from, and why they were here now. In this series, I'm recounting the Earth War,
as depicted in the Aliens comics series, and the events leading up to it, as well as its
aftermath. The accounts are explored as originally published,
despite certain names, locations, and other events having been altered over time. For all Earth War videos, check out the playlist
on the end screen for past videos, and stay tuned for more. As always, I'd like to Thank you very much
for watching. I really appreciate it, and If you enjoyed
this video, please make sure to give it a like, and you can also subscribe for all the
latest videos from the channel A very, very special thanks goes out to Weyland
Yutani Executive EmYaruk, part of the Patreon Hive. If you'd like to join the hive and support
the channel, check out my Patreon page for exclusive posts and contests. In the meantime you can catch up with Alien
Theory over social media- follow @Alien_Theory on Twitter, and @AlienTheoryYT on Facebook
and Instagram for more. And until next time, this is Alien Theory,
signing off.
