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The Xenomorphs

  • "I stared into the sun. I stared into the creature's eyes. And what did I see? Nothing. It has no eyes. Neither of us have now. I saw nothing. No devil. No ultimate evil. No ultimate anything. Just bland, indifferent destruction. No more demonic than an earthquake or a plague. There is no devil. There is no god."

    Different species who have encountered them have different names for them, different reactions to them, but they all agree on one thing--xenomorphs are a force of nature. No one knows their origin; their seemingly bio-mechanical nature hints at being purposefully created, but the galaxy is vast, the forms of life many and varied. It can't be ruled out that they are a naturally-evolving species. In the end, they are nearly unstoppable; a single drone is capable of destroying a large human complex in hours. In the same amount of time, a swarm is capable of overwhelming everyone, turning the complex into a nest, and if there are eggs, trap humans and prepare them to be hosts. Entire planets have been overrun in weeks with no more than a small swarm. When swarms are led by a Queen, there is no hope.

    They display a disturbingly complex sense of cunning and strategy, yet they have no discernible "culture" as such. They seem to not even be like the insects from whom so many terms have been adopted. They haven't been seen to eat, they all but never pass up the opportunity to kill, they are immune or highly resistant to most attacks or environmental changes--in short they terrify anyone who comes across them.

    What makes them worse is that they aren't "evil". They don't kill for sport or pleasure. They don't wreak havoc out of malevolent glee. They are no more "evil" than a natural disaster. That usually just makes them all the more terrifying.

    As is the way of such things, there is no single, unified reaction by other sentient life forms; sometimes they're worshipped, revered as gods and given sacrifices. They have become intrinsically tied to the Yautja culture, inextricably tied to some of the Yautja's most deep-seeded and sacrosanct rituals and beliefs. While they respect the xenomorph, that respect also keeps them from even simply leaving the xenomorphs alone. A rite of passage is a band of young Yautja being loosed onto a small swarm. Should they survive, they become adults in their people's eyes. Special hunts are undertaken to capture Queens, a harrowing and tense undertaking that can often fail and end in annihilation even when everything is done correctly.

    Then there are humans. The deep tenacity, the unending curiosity, the unyielding determination that the species is known for makes them try to study the xenomorph, to understand it--to control it. Their attempts have been frighteningly successful; some who are aware enough say the Yautja can learn about the xenomorphs from the humans. That such attempts to understand have been successful if at the cost of many, many lives is often regarded as an acceptable loss, at least to those sitting far from the bloodshed.

    Xenomorphs aren't evil; they can't be reasoned with, they can't be persuaded, and they can't be swayed. They are a force of nature, no more "evil" than a natural disaster, but nearly infinitely more deadly.