River of Pain

by Christopher Golden

  “Do you feel that?” Russ asked, coming in behind her.

  Anne glanced in either direction along the broad, tall corridor. The floors and walls were made of some otherworldly alloy, tubes like veins running along the ceiling and the innermost wall.

  She switched off her helmet lamp to conserve its battery, gripped another light that was attached to her belt, and turned it on. Russ did the same. Streaks of some fluid had dried on the wall in several places. She reached out to touch the stain, but hesitated, then pulled her hand back.

  “Yeah. I feel it.” She looked to the right, staring along the tunnel. That direction would take them to the tip of the ship’s horseshoe design—the one closest to the crawler—which suggested that the more significant finds would be to the left, in the bulk of the vessel.

  Anne glanced at Russ.

  “We should get out of here,” she said, “call this in, and take the kids back to town.”

  Russ stared at her. His goggles had a mist of condensation on the inside. Even so, she saw the struggle in his eyes.

  “We go back, and we’ll never know what they really find out here,” he said. “Honey, even our little cut of this find could set us up forever. Do you understand? But if we want to protect ourselves, keep the company from fucking us over, we’ve gotta know what it is we’ve found.”

  Anne’s heart fluttered, but not with fear.

  “Is that the only reason you want to go on?”

  Russ grinned. “Hell, no. This is what we came out here for… something just like this! Do you want Mori or Reese or some company asshole to be the first one to see whatever there is to see?”

  Nervous, afraid, but more thrilled than she’d ever been, she wetted her lips with her tongue.

  “Hell, no,” she echoed. “But we’ll give it half an hour; no more. I don’t want those kids waiting out there forever. I won’t do that to them.”

  Her husband’s eyes sparkled.

  “Deal,” he said.

  This, she thought, is why I married the man.

  She hefted her equipment and turned left, leading the way. The pond-scum feeling never went away. In fact, it increased as they trudged deeper into the derelict vessel. Her skin grew clammy and though the air felt cold, she felt flushed in a feverish sort of way. She would have thought she had fallen ill, except that Russ felt it, too.

  Anne tried to keep her bearings, picturing the way the ship had sat on the ground, canted toward the back. It seemed hollow and dead, empty in a way that reminded her of an abandoned church she had entered once, as a girl. The small cemetery in the churchyard had been relocated, the bodies dug up and moved. The tabernacle had been taken out, along with several of the more elaborate stained-glass windows.

  The place had felt haunted to her, not by ghosts, but by the absence of life… the architectural memory of voices raised in song and prayer, the echoes of footfalls on the stone floor, the clack of wooden kneelers, and the hope and surrender that always came with worship.

  She’d never again felt such emptiness, until now.

  Yet this was so much worse. The sense of the unknown, the breath of eons of alien culture slid around her, and she shivered with a dread she did not understand.

  “It’s just…”

  “Extraordinary,” Russ said.

  “Ominous,” Anne corrected. “I feel it in my bones, as if it’s welcoming us and yet wants us gone, all at the same time.”

  “It’s in your head,” Russ said. “You’re projecting. We can’t even begin to imagine who the creatures were who built this—they must’ve been huge, though, far larger than any human. So your imagination tells you that we’re intruders.”

  “We are intruders, Russell.”

  She could hear him laugh softly behind her.

  “I don’t see anyone sounding an alarm.”

  Anne flashed a smile, but it only lasted an instant. Her pulse kept racing, adrenaline singing through her.

  “To your right,” Russ said, voice tight. “Deep shadow. What’s that?”

  She twisted around and saw the shadowy cleft in the wall. Holding her breath, she edged nearer, and in the light from her belt she could make out an opening that was much larger than she’d thought. Floor to ceiling, it curved into the wall, a wide swath of shadow. Ducking her head into the cleft, she froze.

  “Careful,” Russ warned.

  “It spirals down,” she said.

  “Their version of stairs?”

  “Maybe. Definitely goes to another level, though.” The spiral reminded her of the inside of an abandoned seashell, which underlined for her the strange bio-organic feel of the ship, as well as the emptiness that haunted her.

  “Keep going. Clock’s ticking,” Russ reminded her.

  Right, she thought. Newt and Tim. She had to get over the uneasiness that gripped her, and pick up the pace. Focused on her kids, Anne began to move faster, following her husband now.

  “You sure we shouldn’t have gone down there, to check out the sub-level?” she asked.

  “Maybe, but I’m going to guess that whatever passes for a pilot’s cabin is at the crux of the horseshoe. I could be wrong, but we don’t have time to think too much about it. Whatever’s down there, it’ll be more than just corridors.”

  As he spoke, the ship’s inner darkness seemed to deepen. Anne turned her head and shone her light on the wall, revealing scars in the strange metal. She stopped again.

  “Anne,” Russ prodded.

  “Look at this,” she said, staring at the pits and gashes in the wall. There were others on the floor. Something had melted right through, which made her stumble back and look up and around to make sure whatever had caused the melting hadn’t continued to leak.

  “Russ…” she said.

  “Later,” he told her as he passed by.

  Anne fell in behind him again, but she kept her eyes on the walls and floor now, and she saw numerous places where similar scarring had occurred. Not just the melted spots, either. There were scorched holes blown in the wall, as if some sort of weapon had been fired. If not for the obvious age of the vessel, the way the dust and rock had eroded its hull and begun to swallow it, she would have begun to worry.

  “Now this is weird,” Russ said.

  He clicked on one of the more powerful lights they’d brought in with them, hoping to take pictures to help establish their claim. The corridor lit up with a sickly yellow illumination and Anne gasped. The walls were different here. If the ship’s construction seemed to hint at the organic, this was something else entirely. These walls were covered with a smooth, ribbed substance, black and gleaming like some mélange of insect cocoon and volcanic rock.

  “What the hell is it?” she asked.

  “You got me,” Russ replied.

  She ran one hand over the surface, grabbed a sharp ridge and applied pressure, snapping a small piece off in her hand. Chitinous and hard, its thinnest edges were brittle.

  “Let’s move on,” she said, fascination guiding her. The clammy feeling had grown worse, but somehow she shrugged it off.

  When they came to another open cleft, spiraling down to a sub-level, they stopped and stared at it for nearly a full minute. This cleft differed from the first. It, too, had been covered by that chitinous material, as if to adapt it for a different sort of species altogether.

  “I don’t like this,” Anne said.

  “Neither do I,” Russ admitted. She could tell how hard it was for him to admit it. He sighed. “Look, let’s just make it to the crux of the ship, to see if that’s the engine room or pilot’s cabin or whatever. We’ll take footage of it, and then get the hell out of here. As long as we get that far, they can’t shut us out entirely.”

  He started to walk away.

  Anne stayed, staring down into that winding cleft.

  “What—” Russ began.

  “We go down,” she said, not entirely certain why. “Whatever might be of value to the company—artifacts, technology, whatever—if it’s down
there, and we pass it by, we’ll regret it forever.” She turned and looked at him, letting him see a truth in her eyes that was painful to reveal. “I don’t want to be here forever, Russ.”

  He shook his head with an incredulous laugh, put a gloved hand against his helmet. “Otto and I—”

  “Were talking crazy,” Anne said. “Abandoning the colony without a backup plan, with no exit strategy… that’s foolish. But this… you’re right. This could be it for us, the thing we’ve been searching for. The kids are out there waiting for us and they’ll keep waiting. We’ve left them longer than this, and they know how to entertain each other. It’s for their sake that we can’t leave here without knowing what it is we’ve found.”

  Anne took one more look along the corridor, her light gleaming on the strange ridges and curves of the glassy black walls. A flash of connection sparked in her mind—cocoon to web to spider—and she shuddered at the inference. She didn’t like the idea of them trapped inside some kind of spiderweb.

  Not a web, she thought, frowning as she studied the walls again. It’s more like a hive. A wasps’ nest.

  Either way, she didn’t like it.

  15

  STRANGE CARGO

  DATE: 21 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1131

  Brackett caught up with Simpson as he was coming out of the toilet, still in the process of cinching his belt. The man seemed to hear the heavy footfalls coming toward him, and he looked up, tensing immediately. He put his hands up as if he feared an assault.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” Brackett said, his voice firm.

  “Whatever it is, maybe you’d better take a step back,” Simpson said. Nervously, he smoothed his mustache and stood a bit straighter, trying to pretend he hadn’t been afraid a moment before.

  Brackett leaned in toward him, crowding the administrator so that he was the one who took a step back.

  “You sent the Jordens out on a survey—”

  “Which is none of your business, is it?” Simpson replied, trying to keep his voice level. “I mean, you made it pretty clear that, in your view, the Colonial Marines aren’t to be involved with the company’s field work,” he added, eyes narrowing.

  “Their kids are, what, six and ten?”

  Simpson shrugged. “Something like that.”

  Brackett tried to remind himself that he would be stationed on Acheron for years, and he had to be able to work with this man. But just the stale smell of Simpson’s breath made him want to throw a punch.

  “Look, Captain, I’m with you,” the administrator continued. “I disapprove entirely of Russ and Anne bringing their kids out on this survey, but there are no rules against it. In fact, this is a wildcat job. Right now they’re operating as independent contractors.”

  “Why now?” Brackett asked. “Why today?”

  A pair of technicians hurried past them. They glanced uneasily at Simpson and Brackett, sensing the hostility there.

  “It’s really not your concern, Captain.”

  “You received specific orders. This isn’t a routine grid search,” Brackett said, and he saw the confirmation in Simpson’s eyes. “Someone at Weyland-Yutani must have wanted that location surveyed immediately.”

  Simpson narrowed his eyes, a smirk appearing on his face.

  “Presumably that’s the case, Captain Brackett, but I’m not privy to the ‘whys’ in cases like this. Nobody tells me anything. If they had told me, however, you can be damned sure I wouldn’t share it with you. It’s company business, I’ll remind you.”

  “And if something happens to the Jordens?” Brackett demanded. “To their kids?”

  Simpson sneered. “Well, then it’ll be a damn shame they didn’t have any marines along to provide security.”

  He brushed past, and ambled back toward his office.

  Brackett could only watch him go.

  * * *

  DATE: 21 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1139

  Anne led the way into the cleft, and she and Russ followed the spiral down into the lower level of the derelict ship.

  Russ said nothing, but she could see from the way he held himself—the cock of his head and the slight hunch of his shoulders—that he felt the dark weight of the ship around him. Just as she did. Her heart beat faster and her breath turned shallow as they wound their way down, helmet lights throwing ghost shapes on the walls.

  They found the first dead thing at the bottom of the spiral.

  “Holy shit,” Russ muttered.

  Anne held her breath as she stepped into the corridor, staring at the thing in the juddering beam. She was trembling. In life, the alien had been very tall and powerfully built, with an extended torso and a long head. It seemed humanoid only in the sense that it had two arms and two legs, but otherwise it was entirely other. Something about it suggested an insect, which gave her an unnerving connection to her thoughts about the hard substance that coated the walls.

  Yet this was no bug.

  Its skin wasn’t skin at all, but some kind of armored carapace. Richly blue in spots, it had faded to gray in most places, and the carapace looked to have gone thin and brittle. She felt sure the thicker, darker shell was closer to its living appearance. Its tail wound behind it, sharp and skeletal, with a tip that would have made a wicked weapon. Not quite a stinger, Anne thought, but if the alien used it that way it would have killed a person just as quickly.

  “It’s beautiful,” Russ said.

  Anne turned to stare at him in disgust.

  “What?”

  “Look at it,” he said. “It’s like nothing anyone has ever seen. Until now.”

  “It’s horrible,” she said quietly, staring at the blue-tinted jaws and the tail. “This thing was born to kill.”

  “It’s been dead for a very long time,” Russ said. “But I’ll tell you what it was born for… to make us rich.”

  He gave a quiet laugh and turned away, moving down the sub-level corridor. Anne stared another moment at the dead alien, and then followed. Russ might be right, and she knew this thing couldn’t harm her—its cadaver was little more than a shell, not unlike the derelict spacecraft they were exploring. But she couldn’t escape the feeling of its presence. When she had first entered the ship, she had been sure its halls were as empty as that abandoned church. Now every shadow felt full of menace, of teeth and slithering, sharp-tipped tails.

  The sub-level had been completely taken over by the chitinous walls she’d seen above, but still there were many spots where something had melted through, sprayed and burned its way into the floors and walls. They walked through the darkness, lighting their own way, and at a curve in the hallway they found three more of them.

  One had been torn in half, its desiccated corpse a dried and twisted thing, half on one side of the hall and half on the other. Another had an enormous hole through its mid-section, and the floor beneath it had been melted away into a yawning chasm. A draft swept in from there, but whether from outside or from elsewhere in the ship, they could not tell.

  There were doors all along the corridor. Some of them opened easily, while others were stuck shut by that strange, hardened, resin-like substance. The first two that Russ opened contained nothing more than dust and small, strange bones. In the next there were thick metal alloy shelves with mounds that were now rot. It was impossible to know what they had been before rotting.

  “Cargo, do you think?” Anne asked.

  “Of some kind,” Russ agreed. “Food or some other materials. Those first two rooms were pens, though. Like stables. Alien livestock or something else… Whatever they were, these creatures were taking them somewhere.”

  That didn’t sound right to Anne. Didn’t feel right.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Not the things we saw back there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whatever those creatures were, they weren’t the ones piloting this ship.”

  He nodded, but didn’t respond.

  They continued on,
discovering other massive alien corpses in clusters of three or four, perhaps twenty in all. Several minutes later, maneuvering through the claustrophobic underbelly of the ship, they encountered something altogether different. New remains.

  Anne froze. Now she understood why the corridors were so high and so wide. They hadn’t been built this size for the sake of grandeur, but simply for scale. The remains of this new creature were more humanoid than the first, but even larger than the others—nine feet, Anne guessed. All that remained of its body was its skeleton—bones inside some kind of exo-suit of the same design as the ship, with the same techno-organic texture.

  This dead thing had been one of the ship’s crew. She knew it.

  “Where are the others?” she asked.

  “Others?” Russ said. “You think there are other species here?”

  “No, no… others like this one. Where’s the rest of the crew?”

  Russ had no answer.

  “How long have we been gone from the crawler?” she asked.

  “Dunno,” he said, checking his watch. “Thirty-five minutes? Not more than that, I don’t think.”

  Taking a deep breath, she reached out and took his hand, not liking the fact that their gloves kept their skin from touching.

  “All right. Let’s get some images of this guy and the others, and then we get out of here. Five minutes more,” she said.

  Russ agreed. They worked mostly in silence, both of them uneasy. Anne felt disappointed in herself—in both of them. By all rights they ought to have been ecstatic. He had been right. This was going to change their lives. Their share of whatever the company made from this salvage—from the ship and its tech, from the alien corpses and whatever Weyland-Yutani might learn from them—meant they would never have to work again. They should have been weeping with joy, screaming in celebration. Instead, Anne felt like she couldn’t breathe, felt the weight of the air inside the ship as if it might suffocate her. She just wanted out, and judging from his silence, she knew that Russ felt the same.