Sea of Sorrows Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  1 Black Sand

  2 Unsure Footing

  3 The Scent

  4 Adrift

  5 Home Again

  6 Paranoia

  7 The Hunted

  8 Awakening

  9 Witness

  10 Business as Usual

  11 Decker

  12 Descent

  13 For Love of Money

  14 Breakfast

  15 The Ship

  16 Wetworks

  17 Necropolis

  18 Upping the Ante

  19 Upward Toward Darkness

  20 A Moment’s Peace

  21 Everywhere

  22 Data Stream

  23 Labyrinth

  24 Examinations

  25 Dark Tides

  26 Trapdoor Spiders

  27 Negotiations

  28

  29 Dignity

  30 Wounds

  31

  32 Pandemonium

  33 Surprises

  34 Regrouping

  35 Boom

  36 Shadows

  37 Red Sand

  38 Wrecked

  39 Communications

  40 Search and Rescue

  41 Good News

  42 Escape Velocity

  43 Nests

  44 Breeding Grounds

  45 Mother-of-Spiders

  46

  47 Falling

  48 Love

  49 Differences

  50 The Long and Winding Road

  51 A Side Trip

  52

  53 Payback

  54 Burdens

  55 Samples

  56 Plain Sight

  57 Deliveries

  58 Plagues

  59 Letters Home

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

  ALIEN™: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

  ALIEN: RIVER OF PAIN (NOVEMBER 2014)

  THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS

  ALIEN

  ALIENS™

  ALIEN 3

  ALIEN ™ : SEA OF SORROWS

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781162705

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781162712

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: July 2014

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  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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  www.titanbooks.com

  PROLOGUE

  He knew what they were.

  The shapes looked wrong in his mind, all swollen out of proportion and twisted by sensory input that made almost no sense, but he recognized the outdated EVA suits for what they were.

  * * *

  See how they run.

  They scatter as we approach, hidden within their artificial skins.

  The tunnels are dark to them, they cannot see as well as they should. They cannot feel the air currents or taste the fear of their prey. They cannot understand the simplest things, like how important it is to find the right ones for furthering the race.

  They flee, with no concern for anything but individual survival. There is no sense of community for them. They are weak. They are easily moved in the right directions.

  That one.

  Its breaths come in a constant, panting wheeze. Its heartbeat is a wild flutter of desperation and the need for survival. There is fear, yes, but strength as well, and a powerful sense of aggression.

  * * *

  The sensations came into his head unbidden, unwanted.

  He tried to open his eyes. The lids refused him. He tried to shake his head but nothing happened.

  He felt the body under him struggling, felt his own repulsion at the way it moved and smelled and felt beneath his hard shell and he knew that was wrong. There was nothing about the sensations that made sense.

  They weren’t his.

  * * *

  It tries to escape. It pushes another of its own kind out of the way, knocks it down and crawls over it, dust falling from its body as it shakes free of the collapsing barriers. It is strong. It is fast. It wants to live.

  It will live.

  It screams as it is taken down, pinned to the ground. Struggles, beating its hands against the hard flesh until it becomes necessary to bare teeth in warning… and then it struggles all the more. Beneath the shell of hard synthetics there is another face that shows wild eyes and a mouth stretched open silently. If it could break the hide with its hands it would be a threat. Instead it can merely scream again as the teeth bite and peel back the soft skin of the closest limb.

  The blood is hot and stinks of weakness, but it will suffice. It will serve the need it must. We break the shell around the soft face and it gasps, unable to breathe the atmosphere.

  The life-giver moves closer, ready to plant the seed. Strong fingers clutch the soft face that chokes and exhales in desperation.

  It will—

  * * *

  Alan Decker woke with a jerk, and stared at his distorted reflection as it gazed back with wild eyes.

  Reflection?

  There was a translucent glass surface inches from his face. There were lights flashing, and his breath blasted against the confining surface.

  Waking inside of a hypersleep chamber should have been familiar, given how many times he’d traveled between worlds. But the dreams—damn them—the dreams made him panic. He couldn’t control the feelings. They were simply too vivid, too primal.

  It was getting so he couldn’t remember what life had been like before.

  His hands pushed at the interior, fumbling for the manual release that would free him. He could still feel the tunnels, the weight of what seemed like a mountain above him, pressing down as he stalked the—

  No. Not me. I didn’t stalk anyone. I don’t hunt for…

  For what?

  He thrust the thought aside. The damned dreams were so real, so pervasive that sometimes he could understand why the shrinks had such a field day with him back on Earth.

  1

  BLACK SAND

  The air was nearly perfect. The temperature had just hit 74 degrees Fahrenheit, with moderate humidity and a gentle breeze coming from the southwest. The land in that direction was fertile, with lush green grass and the glimmer from a stream that said it would stay that way. The smell on the wind spoke of new life.

  The people
who’d paid for the terraforming project had spent enough money to guarantee that their colony would be perfect. But one glance to the north of that picturesque landscape, and the notion of perfection went straight to hell.

  Over the span of just a few acres the grass yellowed and died, then was replaced by almost sixty miles of black sand and the sort of stench that was guaranteed to ruin property values. It wasn’t actually necessary to wear a hazmat suit, but it sure looked and smelled like it should have been.

  On the bright side, they’d had rain the night before and the soft sand was packed down from the extra moisture. Normally when you walked out into it you sank a couple of inches. But now—for at least a little while—they would be able to stand up without feeling as if they were about to sink out of sight.

  Decker studied the screen on his hand-held, reviewing reports on the latest samples from the area. He frowned. To all appearances, whatever was happening, it wasn’t natural. And more often than not, in a situation like this, anything unnatural meant negligence. The Interstellar Commerce Commission was in charge of maintaining certain guidelines for safety and commercial equity on Earth, in the growing Colonies and along the Outer Rim. As a Deputy Commissioner in the ICC, Decker got to make sure that all procedures were being followed properly. That meant dealing with paperwork of a magnitude that guaranteed him both job security and major headaches—in the form of a long list of counter-arguments from the company that had to be responsible.

  Lucas Rand stood next to him and was reading the same results, but Rand was smiling—something that didn’t often occur. The difference was that while Rand could understand what the results meant, he didn’t have to fill out the endless forms. Rand was an ICC Engineer. He was paid to fix problems that Decker found. Someone else—heaven alone knew who—then got to bill the companies that had their problems fixed. Bureaucracy in action.

  It was a living.

  Decker glanced at him and frowned.

  “Don’t go getting all excited about how easy your life is,” he said. “I may have to deal with the bureaucracy, but you get to figure out how to fix this mess.”

  Rand’s smile faltered a bit.

  “Not sure if we can fix it.” He scowled as he looked at the sand. When he wasn’t grinning, he scowled a lot, but it was only because his face was designed that way. Luke Rand was probably one of the nicest guys Decker knew. He just looked like he ate bears for breakfast. He was a big man, too, though not nearly all of it was muscle.

  “Yeah. But I don’t catch the flak for your shortcomings,” Decker said, and it was his turn to grin. “You do.”

  Rand scratched at the back of his hairy neck and looked out toward the Sea of Sorrows. That was the name land developers had been using for centuries to describe a place like this—where builders had spent their blood, sweat, tears, and money, but to no avail. Where the ground itself seemed determined to thwart their efforts, and send them packing.

  This particular Sea of Sorrows shouldn’t have existed. Designation LV178, New Galveston, had been terraformed by people who knew what they were doing. All anyone had to do was look in almost any direction to see how damned good they were. It had started out as a nightmare planet, with raging storms and an unbreathable atmosphere. There’d been no potable water, and before the current project began, the only thing that had grown here was debt from failed attempts to establish a viable base.

  Then Weyland-Yutani had come along.

  Thirty years had passed since the first settlers had landed and begun the project, and for the most part New Galveston was an example of what happened when things went right. Three major cities were already in place, all connected by a network of high-speed trains, and each with enough viable farmland to ensure that the colonies could sustain themselves without having to resort to endless shipments of canned goods and other expensive imports.

  Everything was golden, as Rick Pierce liked to say. Pierce, the man who’d established the colony in the first place, had been delighted with New Galveston. Then the Sea of Sorrows had appeared.

  It hadn’t been there when Weyland-Yutani had completed their efforts. The atmosphere processing engines had done their job, everyone had been pleased, and all was right with LV178. Until contractors had begun to lay the foundations of what was intended to be the fourth major city. In the midst of that development had come the discovery of a few acres of soft ground.

  Immediately it had begun to grow, slowly at first, then faster. Soon it became an obstacle, and then a bane. Where the sands took over, nothing would grow. There were toxins present, and where they spread, there was no way for the land to support a viable colony.

  Then the closest thing to growth had appeared, in the form of silicon nodes. The hollow black, glassy clusters of fused sand had sprouted, coming from somewhere down below, and they weren’t just annoying. They were difficult to detect, and dangerous. Four separate prefabricated structures had been started, and all of them had collapsed because the silicon wasn’t durable enough to support the weight.

  Since pre-fabs were essential to the city-building efforts of the New Galveston Collective, this presented a serious problem.

  No, the planet’s next city simply wasn’t going to happen unless Decker and his team could figure out what had gone wrong. If they failed, and the sands continued to spread—perhaps to one of the established population centers—the entire LV178 project might be in jeopardy.

  The ICC didn’t like risky situations, and Weyland-Yutani—a corporation that worked hard at maintaining the appearance of a spotless record—didn’t like failure, especially at such tremendous expense.

  So he and Rand had their marching orders. Decker was here to monitor every aspect of the process, and report every excruciating detail back to their corporate overlords.

  Rand and his crew were here to repair the damage.

  * * *

  Not far away, two of the men ostensibly on Decker’s crew were struggling with a probe that didn’t seem to want to settle properly on the unstable surface. A few other workers were milling about, further away—most likely on a break.

  All in all, thirty-seven people were currently working out what had gone wrong, using the latest in spectral analysis and chemical geo-forensics. The machinery wasn’t quite as impressive as the terraforming engines that had redesigned the world, but it cost almost as much.

  The weight distribution was tricky, and though it was damp, the sand was hardly ideal. The platform they were using to support the core sampler had too small a base—they should have added extensions to compensate. But he held his tongue. These guys were stubborn, and as far as they were concerned, he wasn’t their boss. He’d been assigned to work with them, but they just didn’t give a damn. Tempers flared if they thought he was trying to tell them how to do their jobs, and these were men who thought first with their fists.

  Decker wasn’t the sort to back down from a fight, but this was the kind of grief he didn’t need—in more ways than one. Still, they had to pull up the core samples, if they were going to get this particular cluster un-fucked.

  He scanned the screen again, and his jaw clenched. Something about this screamed catastrophe. He’d dealt with situations on dozens of different worlds. You can’t reshape the biosphere of an entire planet without flirting with disaster. Yet most times the fixes were easy, as long as you approached them from the right angle.

  This time?

  Not so much. Not if he was right.

  The ground had gone sour, and in most of the cases he’d run across in the past, that pointed to a human factor. Dig deep enough, look far enough into the records, and the truth would come out. Someone had screwed up here, royally, yet there were no records.

  That smelled like a cover-up.

  Decker clenched his teeth at the very thought. No matter how he looked at it, he was going to be leveling a finger at one of the biggest dogs in the corporate pack.

  It wouldn’t be the first time, though. Good as they were, Weyland-Yu
tani had a track record. This would be his third run-in with them, and if the last two had been any indication, his life was about to get “interesting,” in the Chinese sense of the word. The company didn’t like getting egg on their collective faces, and their lawyers would cause as many waves as possible in an effort to stay clean.

  Rat bastards.

  Rand pointed to a line in the readouts.

  “Trimonite? Seriously?” He looked up. “That could explain a lot.” His usual scowl was back, and in spades.

  “Yeah,” Decker said. “It might.” Trimonite was a wonderfully dense mineral used in the manufacture of a lot of heavy equipment. It was costly to extract, and thus carried a hefty price tag.

  But trimonite alone shouldn’t have presented the problem. Before it could be used for industrial purposes, trimonite had to be refined, and it was this refining process that often caused any toxicity. So if the source of the trouble was the trimonite beneath the Sea of Sorrows, why was it poisoning the soil? And where did the silicon fit in?

  He looked again at the readouts, and nodded.

  “We need to dig deeper. Literally,” he said. “Do you suppose there could have been a mining colony around here?”

  Rand shook his head.

  “That’d fit with the toxicity readings,” he replied, “but we checked the ICC records backward and forward. Bupkis. If there was one, though, why the hell would anyone want to build over the top of it? That’s just asking for trouble—planting a colony on a toxic waste dump. You’d need to be really stupid, or just not give a shit.”

  True that, Decker mused. In the case of Weyland-Yutani, he was pretty sure which it was.

  “We need to look into it,” he replied. “I’m not saying it would explain everything, but it’s a starting point.”

  Rand snorted, made a face, and then spit into the black sand.

  “Even if there’s a mine, it still doesn’t explain this shit.” He swung his foot and pushed enough away to reveal one of the glass lumps. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Planting his boot, he applied pressure until the clump of glass started to break. The things grew like cypress knees back home, thrusting up from below, and were often hollow. Some were very fragile, and when they broke, the openings they revealed stretched far into the darkness below.