River of Pain

by Christopher Golden

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Christopher Golden

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1: Our Guest

  2: Tremors

  3: Rebecca

  4: Arrivals

  5: Rough Terrain

  6: The Ladder

  7: Trouble in Threes

  8: Storms Seen and Unseen

  9: Otto’s Wish

  10: The Cost

  11: New Friends and Old

  12: Nostromo Mysteries

  13: A Family Outing

  14: Dereliction and Duty

  15: Strange Cargo

  16: Be Careful What You Wish for

  17: Nothing Alive

  18: Dark Turns

  19: Capture – for – Study

  20: The Worst Question

  21: Incubation Period

  22: Safety Measures

  23: Escape Routes

  24: All Fall Down

  25: Secrets and Lives

  26: One by One

  27: Ready to Fight

  28: Monster Maze

  29: Enough Dying

  30: Building Better Worlds

  31: The Cruelest Trick

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

  ALIEN™: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

  ALIEN: SEA OF SORROWS

  THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS

  ALIEN

  ALIENS™

  ALIEN3

  ALIEN RESURRECTION (MARCH 2015)

  ALIEN™: RIVER OF PAIN

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781162729

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781162736

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: November 2014

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Alien ™ & © 2014 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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  1

  OUR GUEST

  DATE: 4 JUNE, 2122

  For a long time Ripley had tried her best to avoid the Nostromo’s medical bay. Its white walls and bright lights chased away even the smallest shadows. The air was full of electric buzz and the sounds of machines.

  As warrant officer on board the Nostromo, she’d spent far more time in the gray gloom of its corridors and compartments, flickering work lights the only intrusion into the darkness. Strange, really, but in her time on board one ship after another, she had grown more accustomed to shadows than light.

  All that had changed.

  * * *

  The Nostromo had been traveling through the Zeta-2-Reticuli system, carrying twenty million tons of mineral ore bound for Earth, when the ship’s on-board computer, designated “Mother,” had responded to a distress signal from a planetoid called LV-426. Mother had woken the crew early from hypersleep, with instructions to investigate.

  Ripley was uneasy with the order from the start. They weren’t planetary explorers or colonists. It wasn’t their job.

  But orders had been clear. The captain, Dallas, had reminded her that their “job” was whatever the corporation decided it should be. And so they’d gone.

  Upon landing, Dallas had taken his executive officer, Kane, and their navigator, Lambert, out onto the surface to investigate the source of the distress signal—a derelict spacecraft that was decidedly not of human origin. At that point, all of Ripley’s internal alarm bells had gone off. They had no idea what dangers might await them inside that ship, and the captain, the XO, and their pilot shouldn’t have been the ones checking it out.

  They walked into a nightmare.

  Ripley no longer felt comfortable in the Nostromo’s shadows. She sought out the medical bay, not for treatment, but for its light. Ash was there—the ship’s science officer. He had an air of superiority that pissed her off. Sometimes he seemed to be looking down on the rest of them, as if they were specimens viewed through his microscope.

  It made her skin crawl.

  Nevertheless, as the ship’s science officer, he might be their best hope of figuring out what the hell had really happened down there in the raging atmospheric storms on the surface of LV-426… what had happened to Kane.

  But Ripley wouldn’t just blindly follow orders, not anymore. The company’s demands had made her uneasy. Mother’s focus on whatever xenomorphic life they had encountered down on that ugly moon had troubled her. But when she voiced her concerns, the others had been unwilling to listen.

  Well, to hell with that. She wasn’t going to give them a choice. She had a daughter back on Earth—she had promised Amanda that she would come home safely, and she refused to break that promise.

  So she’d follow her instincts, ask whatever questions demanded answers, and not worry about whose toes she might be stepping on.

  * * *

  Ripley entered the medical bay quietly. It felt like crossing the border into a foreign land without the permission of the king. She surveyed the lab area, all screens and white walls and yellow buttons, the lighting subdued now.

  She stepped through into a second compartment and saw Ash off to her right, studying a vid-screen. A small man, his presence nevertheless held a certain weight. His brown hair had just begun to gray, and his eyes were icy blue.

  Ash bent to peer through a microscope, diverting his attention enough that she managed to get within a few feet without him taking notice. The image on the computer screen made Ripley shiver with revulsion.

  It looked like a scan of the spidery alien creature that had attached itself to the face of the XO, but she couldn’t quite make out the details. The thing had some sort of tail that wrapped around Kane’s throat, and it tightened any time they attempted to remove it. They’d cut into it, but the hideous thing had bled acid that had burned its way down through three levels of the Nostromo. Another deck or two, it would have eaten through the hull, and they’d all be dead now.

  Ash was fascinated with it.

  Ripley just wanted it dead.

  “That’s amazing,” she said quietly, nodding toward the image on the screen. “What is it?”

  Ash glanced up abruptly.

  “Oh, this?” he said. “I don’t know yet.” He clicked off the screen, straightening his back, and attempted an air of courtesy that was unlike him. “Did you want something?”

  So polite, she thought. We’re both being so damn polite.

  “Yes, I… to have a little talk,” she muttered. To tell the truth, she wasn’t quite sure why she was t
here. “How’s Kane?”

  The air between them had a buzz all its own, not unlike the persistent hum of electricity. From the moment Ash had joined the crew—foisted upon them by the company, right before they’d set off from Thedus with their cargo—she had harbored a dislike for him. Some people had that effect on her. They’d walk into a room and she’d be instantly on guard. If she’d been a cat—like Jones, the ship’s mascot—an encounter with Ash would have made her hair stand up.

  He avoided direct eye contact, and she could tell he wanted her to leave.

  “He’s holding. No changes.”

  Ripley nodded toward the darkened screen.

  “And our guest?” That got her a glance.

  “Well, as I said, I’m still… collating, actually,” Ash replied. He picked up a micro-scanner tablet and studied its display. “But I have confirmed that he’s got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. Has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon, which gives him prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions.” He paused, and gave her a little smile. “Is that enough?”

  Enough, she thought. Is that enough? He might as well have asked her to get the fuck out.

  “That’s plenty,” she replied, but she stood her ground. “What does it mean?” she asked, bending to look into the microscope.

  Ash stiffened. “Please don’t do that.”

  Ripley cocked her head, unable to keep from making a face. She knew he was more than a little persnickety about his lab, but why get so uptight about her looking into a microscope? She hadn’t even touched it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her tone making it clear that she wasn’t.

  Ash recovered his composure.

  “Well, it’s an interesting combination of elements,” he said, “making him a tough little son of a bitch.”

  A chill went through Ripley.

  “And you let him in,” she said.

  Ash lifted his chin, looking offended.

  “I was obeying a direct order, remember?” he replied testily.

  Ripley studied him closely, and at that moment she knew exactly why she had come to the medical bay.

  “Ash, when Dallas and Kane are off the ship, I’m senior officer,” she said.

  His expression went blank.

  “Oh, yes. I forgot.”

  But he hadn’t. She knew that, and so did he. He hadn’t even attempted to sound convincing. What troubled her, however, was the why of it all. Was it just another example of Ash being a prick? Did he not respect her place in the command hierarchy? Or did it not have anything to do with her? Did he just feel like he could do whatever the hell he wanted, without facing any repercussions?

  That stops now, she decided.

  “You also forgot the science division’s basic quarantine law,” she said.

  “No, that I didn’t forget,” he replied calmly.

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “You just broke it, huh?”

  Ash bristled, peering straight at her, his right hand resting on his hip.

  “Look, what would you have done with Kane, hmm? You know his only chance for survival was to get him in here.”

  His irritation pleased her. It was nice to know she could get to him.

  “Unfortunately, by breaking quarantine you risk everybody’s life,” Ripley countered.

  “Maybe I should have left him outside,” Ash replied. Then he fell back to his usual air of aloof superiority. “Maybe I’ve jeopardized the rest of us, but it was a risk I was willing to take.”

  Ripley edged a bit closer, her gaze locked with his.

  “That’s a pretty big risk for a science officer,” she said. “It’s not exactly out of the manual, is it?”

  “I do take my responsibilities as seriously as you, you know?” Ash replied.

  Ripley cast another glance at the screen. She wanted a look at that computer, but she wasn’t even sure she would understand what she was seeing.

  Ash stared defiantly at her.

  “You do your job,” he added, “and let me do mine, yes?”

  A dozen possible replies raced through her mind, none of them polite or pleasant. Instead, Ripley took a breath, let it out, then turned and strode from the room. All she had wanted all along was for Ash to do his job, but he seemed more interested in the creature attached to Kane’s face than he was in saving the XO.

  Why?

  2

  TREMORS

  DATE: 11 OCTOBER, 2165

  Greg Hansard stood in the raging atmospheric stew on the surface of LV-426, and wished he could scream. Above him, the atmosphere processor gave a shriek of grinding metal and shuddered so powerfully that he could feel the trembling of the machine in the ground underfoot.

  “What the hell are you guys doing in there?” Hansard bellowed into his comm link.

  His heart slammed in his chest, beating in rhythm with the banging of the processor, and he felt as if he was suffocating inside his breathing mask. The irony wasn’t lost on him, but it didn’t lessen the urge to tear the mask off. He wouldn’t do it, though—he might be going crazy out there in the grit-storm, but not that crazy.

  “Our best—that’s what we’re doing,” one of the engineers shouted in reply. Over the roar of the wind, Hansard couldn’t tell who it was. “There’s a crack in the generator housing! If we bring it down to half-speed, we may be able to make repairs without shutting the whole thing down.”

  “Do it,” Hansard shouted back. “Just get it done as fast as you can! We can’t afford any more delays.”

  “Hell, boss, we didn’t pick the damn planet,” the engineer replied.

  Hansard hung his head in exasperation.

  “I know, man,” he said. “And I’d like to throttle the idiot who did.”

  “Hansard, you better get over here!” another voice shouted over the comm. This one he recognized.

  “What is it, Najit?” he asked as he began to circle around the machine. The atmosphere processor towered sixty-seven feet above his head, juddering and banging and spewing out breathable air.

  “You’d better see for yourself,” Najit replied.

  There were three engineers inside the atmosphere processor, and half a dozen outside. Najit was a structural engineer. For six years the company had been trying to terraform LV-426—now called Acheron—even as they built the foundations for the colony to come. The main structure of the central complex was in place, and a dozen colonists were already living down there with the builders and engineers, all under the management of the colonial administrator, Al Simpson.

  Barely a day went by without Simpson tracking him down to bitch at him over the speed of the terraforming efforts. As far as Hansard was concerned, Simpson was an idiot in the employ of people whose idiocy existed on a far grander scale.

  The colony—dubbed Hadley’s Hope, after one of its designers—was a joint endeavor sponsored by the Earth government and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, overseen by the colonial administration and supposedly adhering to all rules established by the Interstellar Commerce Commission. Acheron itself wasn’t really a planet, even though they referred to it that way. It was a rock in the middle of nowhere, one of the moons of a planet called Calpamos.

  Its storms were near constant, a blinding torrent of wind and grit and dust. No matter how well Hansard sealed himself inside his mask and hood and exposure suit, the grit still got everywhere.

  Everywhere.

  Every damn day.

  Of all the places Weyland-Yutani could have chosen as the cradle for a new human colony, why this one? Atmospheric conditions had prevented them from properly mapping the topography from space, and yet some asshole had decided it was prime real estate.

  It seemed to Hansard as if the place itself didn’t want them there. They had managed to place atmosphere processors at various intervals around the surface, and the most important one—the massive, cathedral-like Processor One—was under construction. But they had run into all sorts of p
roblems along the way. Tremors cracked the terrain and swallowed one of the smaller processors whole. Accidents and surveying errors and faulty equipment had caused all kinds of delays.

  And now… what?

  He marched around the base of the processor, unnerved by the machine’s knocking. The ground trembled, and Hansard thought he might have trembled along with it. He tasted dirt in his mouth.

  “Najit?” he called, thinking he ought to have found the man already.

  “Here!” came the reply.

  Hansard peered through the blowing veil of grit and spotted three figures, but they weren’t anywhere near the processor. They stood a dozen feet from the hull of the machine, staring down at the ground.

  Oh shit, Hansard thought. Please don’t tell me—

  The processor shook. Hansard spun to stare at it, holding his breath. The machine shuddered so violently that he could see the hull shifting. Suddenly he realized that not all of the tremors were coming from the machine itself.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted.

  The grinding of metal inside the structure grew into a squealing thunder.

  Turning, Hansard ran to the others. Three men outside, yes. But there were three men inside as well. Inside with that grinding, shrieking metal.

  “What the hell—” he began.

  “It’s another fissure,” Najit shouted.

  As he drew closer, Hansard could see the crack in the ground beneath their feet, thick layers of atmospheric dust and volcanic ash spilling like sand into the fissure. Najit ran along the crack, following it away from the processor to determine its length, then paused and turned back to face the other two structural engineers.

  “Fifteen feet!” Najit called. “And growing!”

  Hansard didn’t give a shit how far it went away from the atmosphere processor. He ran to the outer hull and stared at the fissure where it disappeared underneath the machine.

  “No,” he whispered. “No no no no.”

  He gazed up through the curtain of windblown grit. The processor shuddered and the clanking from inside reminded him of an archival clip he’d seen of an ancient locomotive.

  “Shut it down!” he roared. “Shut the whole thing down and get out!”