ALIEN THE COLD FORGE

by Alex White

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  The Complete Alien™ Library From Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1: Line Items

  2: Arrival

  3: The Kennels

  4: Plagiarus Praepotens

  Interlude: Javier

  5: Rescue Puppies

  6: Smoke & Mirrors

  7: Wild Dogs

  8: Truth Will Out

  9: Adrenaline

  Interlude: Dick

  10: Service & Servers

  11: Viable Countermeasures

  Interlude: Lucy

  12: Quarantine Protocol

  13: Lockbox

  14: Severance Package

  Interlude: Dick

  15: Escape Clause

  Interlude: Ken

  16: Exposure

  17: Flight

  18: Reset

  19: Lines of Communication

  20: Distractions

  21: Going Missing

  22: Decisions

  Interlude: Anne

  23: True Colors

  24: Extinguished

  25: Never, Never

  Interlude: Lucy

  26: Daedalus, Who Built the Labyrinth

  27: Invigoration

  28: The Freezer

  29: Vehicular Homicide

  30: Operator Error

  31: The Hard Way

  32: Masterpiece

  33: Ribbon Cutting

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  THE COMPLETE ALIEN™ LIBRARY FROM TITAN BOOKS

  THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS BY ALAN DEAN FOSTER:

  ALIEN

  ALIENS™

  ALIEN: COVENANT

  ALIEN: COVENANT ORIGINS

  ALIEN: RESURRECTION BY A.C. CRISPIN

  ALIEN™: OUT OF THE SHADOWS BY TIM LEBBON

  ALIEN: SEA OF SORROWS BY JAMES A. MOORE

  ALIEN: RIVER OF PAIN BY CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

  ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE BY ALEX WHITE

  THE RAGE WAR BY TIM LEBBON :

  PREDATOR™: INCURSION

  ALIEN: INVASION

  ALIEN VS. PREDATOR™: ARMAGEDDON

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 1

  BY STEVE AND STEPHANI PERRY

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 2

  BY DAVID BISCHOFF AND ROBERT SHECKLEY

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 3

  BY SANDY SCHOFIELD AND S.D. PERRY

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 4

  BY YVONNE NAVARRO AND S.D. PERRY

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 5

  BY MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN AND DIANE CAREY

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS VS. PREDATOR OMNIBUS

  BY STEVE PERRY AND S.D. PERRY

  ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY

  BY ARCHIE GOODWIN AND WALTER SIMONSON

  ALIEN: THE ARCHIVE

  THE ART OF ALIEN: ISOLATION BY ANDY MCVITTIE

  ALIEN: THE SET PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIMON WARD

  THE ART AND MAKING OF ALIEN: COVENANT

  BY SIMON WARD

  ALIEN: COVENANT, THE OFFICIAL

  COLLECTOR ’S EDITION

  ALIEN NEXT DOOR BY JOEY SPIOTTO

  ALIEN: THE COLORING BOOK

  A NOVEL BY ALEX WHITE

  TITAN BOOKS

  ALIEN ™ : THE COLD FORGE

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785651946

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785651953

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: April 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TM & © 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  www.titanbooks.com

  DEDICATION

  To Stephen, Matt, and Kelsey: my Three Musketeers.

  I’m not sure which ones of you are which, though, so don’t ask.

  1

  LINE ITEMS

  ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSION

  LISTENING POST AED1413-23

  DATE: 2179.07.20

  (Unspecified A): Have located indigo flag.

  (Unspecified B): How close are they?

  (Unspecified A): Very.

  (Unspecified B): Acknowledged. Execute.

  Dorian Sudler knows he shouldn’t smoke.

  Jana, the shipyard doctor, complains about it every time she sees him. She’ll be in to check on him before he goes down into his cryo pod, and he enjoys the look on her face when he does something she hates—pleasure from displeasure.

  Maybe he should try to fuck her before going away. She’ll probably let him if he says he’s depressed about the looming year-long sleep. No, he has work to do before he goes under, and his bosses have expectations. Just as he shouldn’t smoke, the director of special resources shouldn’t be fraternizing with employees during an audit.

  His quarters are nice, even if he hasn’t used his bed recreationally on this trip. He’s enjoyed painting the Earthrise, viewing it through the station’s large panoramic windows, the sharp blue heavy against the gray craters of the moon’s surface. It’s a lovely view, because it’s a reflection of the power and respect he deserves.

  Dorian’s slender fingers flicker across the keyboard, running a query concerning the Luna shipyard rightsizing. He finds a healthy organization, green with profits and productivity, and he smiles. He’s cut off the dead leaves, and now life can grow anew. Weyland-Yutani stock will expand one tenth of a percentage point. If nine other directors do as well as him, trillions of dollars will slosh into Weyland-Yutani coffers.

  Scanning through the line items, he looks for any last people on the cusp, people whose performance has been less than stellar. Thirty percent of the way down the page he finds Jana’s name, highlighted in yellow on his bowling chart. There were two major insurance claims this past month, and it is her job to head off those sorts of problems—like smoking, for instance. Dorian ticks off her name, running a simulated personnel roster with a fresh doctor, and finds fewer medical claims. He tags her to be fired by email, scheduling it to occur the week after next, once he is long gone. Luna security and human resources can handle the details.

  He indicates “poor performance” as the cause.

  On the fifty-seventh line he finds Alphonse Kanner, a branch manager in the turbine machining division. Alphonse killed himself last week when he learned of his impending termination at Dorian’s hands. The program lists Kanner as a wash, neither profitable nor a loss.

  But that’s wrong.

  Dorian snatches his cigarette out of the ashtray and sucks hard, burning it down to the bitter filter before stubbing it out with trembling hands. Smoke hisses out through his nose as
he grits his teeth. The computer is wrong.

  Alphonse Kanner has a two-million-dollar company life insurance policy, purchased on his eighteenth birthday. He made the payments and it continued in perpetuity, regardless of employment status. It would cost the banking division significantly more than the average loss of an employee. If he’d died due to an on- station accident, it would’ve been even worse.

  Hands blur across the keyboard again. Dorian finds Kanner’s contract, signed and certified by some idiot more than two decades ago. Clicking from one link to the next, he locates the insurance policy, opens it, and rapidly scans the terms. He lets out a shaking breath, because he’s right, as always.

  Suicide exempts Kanner from the payout. Even better, it came before he ratified the generous severance package they’d offered him. So no, Kanner isn’t a wash. He’s a two- million-dollar score that Dorian, not banking, brought home.

  Muscles tense, Dorian rubs his clenched fists against his suit trousers. The banking operations unit will receive credit for the diminishing trend in payouts, but this is Dorian’s win. He considers adding a comment to the line item, perhaps firing off a message to his superiors, but he’s here to save billions, not millions. He can’t sweat the small stuff.

  “Dorian.” A voice comes from his open door.

  Jana is there, standing ready, clipboard in hand. He smiles, then considers his anger, and introduces a pained quirk to his lips. He needs to blow off some steam.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  Dorian shuts his computer screen. “Can I be honest for a moment?”

  She places her hands on her hips and smirks. “This had better not be a last-minute pass.”

  He stands, stretches out his arms, and strides over to her, his fine Italian shoes heel-toe clicking. He has an impressive height for such an avian frame. No one expects him to be as large or strong as he is—not when they see him at a distance. Jana ever so slightly draws her arms in close. He has wide shoulders, and when he is two paces away from her he thrusts his hands into his pockets, elbows out, thumbs hooked into his trousers. He wants her to know that he could surround her, devour her.

  “I just wanted to talk… to you, specifically.” He gives her a practiced, pained smile. “Everyone hates me, doctor—I’m fully aware of it. I spend most of my days on a ship… mostly in cold sleep. Then I come out and rightsize an organization. Then I go back to sleep.”

  She cocks an eyebrow, but doesn’t back away. He’s read her correctly.

  “Everyone has a job to do,” she says.

  “All I ever see are people’s personal tragedies.” Dorian’s gaze wanders out the window, as though he can’t make himself look her in the eye. He bites his lip. “You can smell it on me.”

  But she’s smelling his something else. Scent is the strongest mnemonic, and he wonders what baggage comes with his.

  “Cigarette smoke,” she says with a coy smile. “Not personal tragedies. And speaking of cigarettes, do you have another?”

  Dorian’s eyes lock with hers, and he feigns a grin.

  “I thought you didn’t smoke, Doctor.”

  She shrugs and takes a step closer. “Everyone has a job to do. Mine is promoting a ‘healthy work environment,’ but I’m about to be off the clock.”

  In all of her cajoling and admonishment, she’d been lying. How could he have missed that? What else had slipped past him? There’s a flash of heat in his gut—not lust, but anger. Between this and Kanner, the whole damned outpost ought to be scuttled. They’re doing things wrong.

  “I’m not stupid, you know,” she says. The liar steps closer to him and touches the top of his tie. “I know what you want.” She hooks her finger into it, gently pulling it loose. “It’s obvious, and we’re probably never going to see each other again.”

  The liar slips his tie free. She can’t see the fists at Dorian’s sides. She’s taken the power from him… or at least tried.

  “I can settle for the cigarette after,” she says, moving in for a kiss. When her lips are almost upon his, he looks down his nose at her.

  “You’ve misread the situation, Doctor,” he says. “I only wanted to talk to a friend, and this behavior is highly inappropriate.”

  Her face flushes as mortification creeps in. She glows with the beauty of someone who has lost all leverage. Dorian feels a powerful urge to bed her in that second, but then she’ll assume he was insincere about “wanting to talk.” No, he can’t ruin this perfection.

  She stammers something and turns away. It takes all his control to keep the smile from his face.

  “I trust you can be professional about this,” he says. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “Okay, yeah,” she says. “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ll be in the cryo tube in an hour, and you can forget all about this unfortunate incident.”

  Maybe Jana will be able to. Maybe he’ll remain a minor source of embarrassment for a few days, and then disappear from her mind. In two weeks the factory supervisor will call her into his office and gently break the news that she’s been let go.

  Stepping through the door, she leaves, and he appends her termination order to state that she made a pass at him, which is inappropriate for a medical professional. Her termination letter indicates that she is not to collect unemployment insurance, or he will file a sexual harassment charge against her. Weyland-Yutani’s margins will improve an infinitesimal fraction of a percentage point.

  Dorian checks his itinerary. His next stop is RB-232, his arrival a year from today. Whatever it is, it’s classified, and he’ll be briefed on site. The cause of his audit: “poor performance.” He reads further, and smiles.

  There’s a problem on RB-232; it’s worth billions of dollars.

  Closing his eyes, he takes a long breath, stilling his heart. Scientists are fun to fire. They think they’re too smart to be disposable. He’ll have that place running like oil on water in no time.

  * * *

  The chimpanzee is screaming again. It won’t go near the egg.

  Blue Marsalis wonders how it knows that death awaits within. Her lab technicians have been so careful not to allow the animals to witness one another’s impregnations. Watching from her side of the thick tempered glass, she grows impatient with the beast. There’s a schedule to keep.

  She would’ve restrained the chimp, anesthetized it, but in the past the resultant embryos were less than spectacular. She thinks of the old butchers’ tales, that a frightened sheep produces sour meat. The face-huggers prefer their meat sour, as do the snatchers that come from them.

  “Get in there, you little shit,” Kambili Okoro, her regular lab assistant, says. He runs a rough hand over his stubble, pulling at his dark skin—a nervous habit.

  “Keep it together,” she replies in a male voice not her own. This body doesn’t belong to her. “We can’t miss the moment.”

  “Why don’t you just man up, go in there, and shove the bastards together?” he asks. “Those things usually leave androids alone.”

  Blue stands up straighter and gives him a nasty look. This is the fourth time this week her lab tech has told her to “man up.” Kambili has been a consistent problem since he came to the Cold Forge, largely because he can’t be replaced. There are few Weyland-Yutani geneticists with his classified credentials, and even if there were more, the next crew rotation isn’t for another year. She’s stuck with him. He knows it.

  “That’s a panicked chimpanzee,” Blue says. “It can apply six hundred kilograms of ripping strength, and do so with ease.”

  Kambili shrugs, still watching through the sample collection area’s window. “So can you.”

  “Have you ever had your arms ripped off?”

  He sighs around his chewing gum. “Obviously not.”

  “Marcus’s body is fully equipped with pain receptors. When that happens, I will feel it.”

  “Then don’t let it happen,” he says.

  Blue cocks her head and wrinkles her nose. “If I damag
e this body, I’m not going to be able to get around the station. It’s not like we get resupplied every day.” She pauses, and then adds, “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop with the ‘man up’ talk, too. I didn’t choose this body. It’s the one the Company provided.”

  “Seems like you’re enjoying it,” he mumbles.

  “What did you say?” she asks, but she heard him perfectly well. Blue’s ears pick up the lightest vibrations. She hates him for being right.

  He gives her a glance, taking in her light complexion, strong jawline, and male build. She can tell he’s appraising her body—known as Marcus—and its many uses. These are things he has no right to consider. She’s seen it before from the other station personnel, and she hates him for it. His mouth widens into a grin, and he starts to laugh.

  The screaming stops.

  They missed the opening of the egg.

  The chimp thrashes about on the ground, but already the face-hugger is delivering its lethal payload. The primate wraps a paw around the yellowed tail that encircles its neck, pulling with inhuman strength, but can’t budge it at all. Its slapping slows as the creature chokes it out, and it stumbles against the wall, sinking onto its belly.

  It happens so fast, within the span of three breaths.

  “Fuck!” Kambili says. “Go!” He slams the release button to flash freeze the chimp chamber. Jets of icy liquid nitrogen fill the space, instantly bringing the temperature down as Blue races around the console to get to the telesurgical systems. She sinks her arms into the robotic stirrups and a pair of silvery articulators descend from the ceiling.

  Using the surgical arms, she shoves the chimp onto its back. Its hair already is rimed with ice crystals. Deftly switching through the modes, she arrives at the surgical laser and slides the hot point down its stomach, tearing away the skin. Another two tics on the modes brings her the bone saw.

  “Time?” she calls out.

  “Twelve seconds,” Kambili says.

  She places the bone saw against the chimp’s exposed sternum, but the world lists to one side and clicks into place. At first, Blue thinks her telesurgical system has locked up. It wouldn’t be the first time the station has experienced equipment failure in the middle of an important experiment.