Newborn

The wind, carrying faint radioactive particles, swept across the mask of Salamanderuslan, ruffling the red mane behind it.

The tall, slender Aeldari girl stood on the edge of a cliff, watching the Stormbird landing craft depart in the distance.

Having been warned by Fu Qinghai, she had already scavenged enough supplies from the transport ship to survive on this desolate planet for three months.

Taking one last look at the dim, yellow sky, Salamanderuslan turned and jumped off the cliff.

She intended to take her supplies and hide within the complex cave system of this planet, which humans had named Planet Roswell VII.

Because she knew.

The orbital bombardment was about to begin.

Liaoxia Hong kept his head down, pacing anxiously back and forth in the main control room of the Bloody Worm transport ship.

He was contemplating where to go from here.

The Word Bearers commander Klofa was dead, and his fellow reincarnators were either dead or missing; he felt completely at a loss.

The Ultramarines had also retreated, so at least he didn't have to skulk around in hiding.

But this was a desolate planet.

Was he really supposed to rot in this godforsaken place until the plotline ended?

Liaoxia Hong let out a breath.

Actually, that wasn't impossible.

At least he was still alive, wasn't he?

Being alive was more important than anything else.

Just as Liaoxia Hong was struggling with his thoughts in the control room.

He failed to notice that in the dark ventilation duct above his head.

A bizarre creature with a pitch-black exoskeleton, its mouth dripping with corrosive, transparent saliva, was watching him with ravenous hunger.

At this very moment, in the narrow gap between the engine nozzle and the engine control room of the Bloody Worm.

If a servitor or crew member responsible for pipe maintenance were to come here now, they would surely be shocked.

Gray-yellow living tissue had completely covered this cramped space, which was originally filled with pipes and cables.

Veins of varying thickness, like the roots of a great tree, extended along the floor, walls, and pipes, reaching deep into the dark crevices.

These flesh-gray veins and yellow living tissues were constantly secreting mucus, making the entire space slick and disgusting.

Right now, behind a bundle of cables, a hunchbacked woman wrapped in gray cloth stood before a massive, egg-shaped object as tall as a person.

The giant egg stood upright on the floor, its base fixed and connected to countless thick root-like veins, which acted like intravenous tubes, pumping nutrients into the egg.

Incubating inside was a Xenomorph that had burst from the chest of a Space Marine.

"Its condition isn't very good; it's very weak..." The hunchbacked woman gently stroked the surface of the giant egg, feeling the faint cries of the little life within.

It expended too much energy and effort breaking through the reinforced chest plate of the Space Marine... the hunchbacked woman thought to herself, it could have evolved much better.

She hadn't expected the chest cavity of a Space Marine to be completely sealed by plates of reinforced bone, which had nearly caused the Chestburster larva to suffocate to death inside.

The giant egg suddenly moved.

It began to pulse and contract upward rhythmically.

As the contraction of the giant egg reached its limit...

With a "splat!" sound, the giant egg split open like flower petals.

A large pool of yellow, translucent, viscous liquid spilled onto the floor like broken amniotic fluid.

The giant Xenomorph warrior the hunchbacked woman had expected did not stand up.

Amidst the remains of the fleshy, petal-like egg, a gray-white Xenomorph with a strangely shaped head crest lay curled within the semi-transparent fetal membrane, its jointed, pointed tail coiled long and tight, struggling from time to time.

The hunchbacked woman looked at the Xenomorph larva struggling in the membrane, gently pulled off the gray cloth wrapping her body, and sighed:

"You could have been a Queen."

If Fu Qinghai or anyone else familiar with the Alien film series were to see the true face of the hunchbacked woman at this moment, they would surely cry out in surprise.

What an ugly, deformed skull it was.

The woman had a skull-like exoskeleton face, with a long head crest extending from the back of her head just like a Xenomorph. Her arms, her neck, and her spine were all covered in the same hideous, craggy exoskeleton as a Xenomorph, only while a normal Xenomorph's exoskeleton was pitch black, hers was a fleshy yellow.

She wasn't truly hunchbacked; she had simply used cloth to bind her long head crest to her spine, and combined with the banana-shaped head and forward-protruding neck typical of a Xenomorph, she appeared to be a stooped, hunchbacked woman.

The Newborn.

Originating from Alien: Resurrection, the Xenomorph Queen in the film, having carried human genes, had given birth to this hybrid of human and Xenomorph DNA in her first litter.

In the sunken, prominent-browed eye sockets of this Newborn, there was a pair of eyes with distinct black and white irises just like a human's. Her nose was two black holes like a skull, and her mouth was the most Xenomorph-like feature, possessing a jawbone that could drop down significantly, along with a row of exposed white incisors.

The other reincarnators had always judged by the sound that this hunchbacked figure following the bearded Belinsky was a woman, but in truth, the Xenomorph Newborn had no gender, or rather, was hermaphroditic.

She can no longer be called a hunchbacked woman; she, or rather it, is currently extending her hands to gently stroke the Xenomorph larva inside the translucent fetal membrane.

This dying Chestburster failed to successfully hatch into a new breed of Xenomorph.

At this moment, a man-sized black Xenomorph is running rapidly on all fours through the narrow corridor, its black jointed tail whipping about to maintain balance; it is even more at home in this slimy space covered in living tissue.

This is a common Drone Xenomorph, birthed from a regular human body, a worker in the Xenomorph hive that can also walk upright.

The pitch-black Drone Xenomorph runs to the side of the yellow Newborn, crouches down, and its drooling mouth lets out a hissing sound.

"What? Where is the thing you spoke of?"

The Newborn seems to understand the Xenomorph's language, or perhaps they are communicating via pheromones.

In any case, the Newborn immediately stands up from the wreckage of the giant egg, looking excited, and says urgently:

"The Black Goo is gone. Take me there immediately, we must lay the Facehugger first."

After Fu Qinghai was sent onto the frigate Dagger, he was immediately placed on a metal stretcher. Several Astartes carried the stretcher along the corridor, walking quickly toward the laboratory in the lower deck where Master Kunto was located.

Fu Qinghai lay quietly on the stretcher, turning his head to look out through the transparent corridor porthole.

Outside the porthole was the endless, massive hull of the cruiser Sotharan.

On the side of the hull facing the hazy planet below, massive hexagonal armor plates lifted, revealing one enormous black missile silo after another.

Dazzling fire erupted in unison from the pitch-black silos.

Giant bombs, each as large as an entire car, were spat out by the silos.

Then, Fu Qinghai watched as these bombs, pulled by initial thrust and planetary gravity, rubbed against the atmosphere and turned into streaks of golden meteors, vanishing into the atmosphere.

An artificial meteor shower.

Viewed from orbit, it was somewhat romantic and beautiful, but Fu Qinghai knew that this meteor shower would bring only endless destruction to the surface.

Inside a corridor of the Bloody Worm.

The pitted bulkheads and floor were covered in bullet holes of various shapes and scorch marks of varying depths.

Deep red blood was splattered radially across the bulkheads.

Corpses were everywhere: Word Bearers, mortal crew members, and Ultramarines.

In the center of the corridor, a small mountain of corpses had piled up.

These bodies were all Ultramarines clad in deep blue Power Armor.

They were all lying face down, piled on top of one another.

Suddenly, the small mountain of corpses moved.

It moved again.

The Ultramarine corpse on top was pushed aside and slid down the pile.

Another Ultramarine corpse was heaved off.

"Ha... ha..."

Gasps came from the pile of bodies, and an arm in red armor reached out.

A Chaos Space Marine of the Word Bearers crawled halfway out of the pile.

From the residual signs of mutation on his armor, it was clear that he had previously been possessed by a daemon, becoming a Possessed Marine.

Yet now, for some reason, the signs of mutation on his body had faded somewhat.

His pincers had turned back into hands, his curved horns had retracted, and the flesh that had originally fused with the Power Armor had separated.

After a Possessed Marine summons a daemon from the Warp to inhabit them, most retain their sanity, but some Chaos Space Marines may have their souls completely devoured by the daemon during battle or when injured, surrendering their bodies entirely to the daemon and transforming into more powerful yet mindless Possessed Marines.

The entire squad of Ultramarines that sacrificed themselves here had done so to kill and bury this one Possessed Marine.

The Chaos Space Marine lay on the pile of corpses, gasping for air, and tore off his helmet, which had twisted and mutated into a fanged maw, revealing a swollen, wrinkled, and deformed bald head.

Two short, scar-like horny protrusions remained embedded in his forehead.

This Word Bearers Chaos Space Marine had thought he was already dead, having perished alongside the squad of Ultramarines pressing down on him.

He had not expected that while the possessing daemon was killed, he himself had survived, narrowly clawing his way back from the brink of death.

Praise the Blood God... despite being covered in wounds and gasping for breath, the Word Bearer still praised him in his heart.

He could still sense that the daemon attached to him was merely dormant, not yet completely banished back to the Warp; he might still have a chance to become a powerful Possessed Marine once again.

Then, he looked up and saw, fixed upright on the floor before him, an egg-shaped object with a strange design.

The top of the egg-shaped object had several cracks, and the base was fixed to a dense cluster of fleshy veins; these gray, blood-vessel-like veins spread out along the floor, extending into the dark crevices around the corridor.

The Chaos Space Marine looked confused; he had never seen this thing before.

The blood-depleted Chaos Space Marine shook his head, feeling dizzy and lightheaded, wanting to confirm if this was some kind of hallucination.

Around this egg-shaped object, three or four identical egg-shaped objects stood upright.

Why were these things appearing on the transport ship?

The bald Chaos Space Marine was frowning as he observed them, when he saw the top of the egg-shaped object suddenly expand violently.

"Snap!" A mass of grayish-white fluid exploded outward, and something shot out from the crack at the top of the egg with lightning speed.

The thing that had been ejected instantly latched onto the Chaos Space Marine's face, covering it entirely.

It was a Facehugger!

The Facehugger's four pairs of appendages clamped tightly onto the sides of the Chaos Space Marine's bald head, while the slick, fleshy membrane between the limbs wrapped around his mouth and nose, forcing him to open his mouth to breathe.

Then, the long, bony tail at the end of the Facehugger would insert itself, injecting a highly paralytic protease through the duct in its tailbone.

"Ah... Mmph..." The bald man opened his mouth to cry out, only for a tail to be shoved inside.

Good... good... The Xenomorph Newborn, hiding in the shadows of the ventilation shaft, cheered inwardly.

She dared not go out and face an Astartes head-on, and the facts had proven that a Drone Xenomorph born from an ordinary human body was just throwing its life away when facing an Astartes.

Yet, just as the Facehugger's paralytic protease had been injected, the Chaos Space Marine reached up and tore at his face.

"Riiip!"

Having only injected a portion of the paralytic protease and not yet managed to transmit its genetic material from the center of its body, the Facehugger was ripped off in one piece.

The Chaos Space Marine flung the Facehugger in his hand to the side, revealing a face left bloody and mangled by the sharp appendages.

The Facehugger, thrown onto the floor with its abdomen facing upward, twitched its slender limbs twice before dying.

The Xenomorph Newborn watching from the shadows felt a jolt of alarm; she had still underestimated the Astartes, even one who was already heavily wounded and on the verge of death.

The Astartes' arm strength, far exceeding that of a normal human, and their resistance to various toxins...

But it didn't matter; she still had a backup plan!

The Chaos Space Marine struggled to stand up from the pile of corpses, shaking his head with great effort.

The small amount of paralytic protein just injected by the Facehugger, which would have caused an ordinary person to faint on the spot, left him even more dizzy and weak-limbed, compounding the effects of his already severe blood loss.

Immediately following this, three or four Facehuggers around the Chaos Space Marine exploded in unison!

"Snap, snap, snap!"

Several Facehuggers, their limbs connected by fleshy membranes, lunged rapidly toward the bald man.

"Argh!"

The Chaos Space Marine's footing was unstable; he swatted one away with a wave of his hand, but another latched on...

In the end, the tall Chaos Space Marine collapsed onto the floor with a heavy thud, like a falling wall.

On his upturned face, a Facehugger was perched, pulsing as it injected the Xenomorph's genetic material into his skull.