Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

He’d also found a small file of electronic books on the computer. He’d been unreasonably excited at first, before he’d scrolled through the limited selection and a cruel truth hit home.

He’d already read them all.

He looked around the dropship’s interior. The alien extrusion was still coating the rear wall, and he thought perhaps he might try to clear it off. There was dried blood on the walls and floor, and the limb was still trapped beneath the equipment rack in the passenger cabin.

Hardly home.

And yet his first meal as a castaway was a good one. He reconstituted some steak stew, carrots, and mashed potatoes, and while they cooled a little he broke the seal on the bourbon. It smelled good, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it last for long. He held the bottle up and turned it this way and that, starlight glimmering through the golden brown fluid. Then he drank without offering anyone, or anything, a toast.

Relishing the burn as the drink warmed him from the inside out, Hoop pressed “record.”

“When I was a kid I dreamed of monsters,” he said. “I don’t have to dream anymore. If you can hear this, please home in on the beacon. I’m alone, drifting in a dropship that isn’t designed for deep space travel. I’m hoping I can program the computer to take me toward the outer rim, but I’m no navigator. I’m no pilot, either. Just a ship’s engineer. This is Chris Hooper, last survivor of the Deep Space Mining Orbital Marion.”

He leaned back in the pilot’s seat, put his feet up on the console, and pressed transmit .

Then he took another drink.

Ripley is lying in a hospital bed. There are shapes around her, all come to visit.

There’s a little girl. Her name is Amanda, and she is Ellen Ripley’s daughter. She’s still young, and she smiles at her mother, waiting for her to come home. I’ll be home for your eleventh birthday, Ripley says. I promise . Amanda grins at her mommy. Ripley holds her breath.

Nothing happens.

Behind Amanda are other shapes Ripley does not recognize. They’re little more than shadows—people she has never known, all dressed in uniforms emblazoned with a ship’s name she does not recognize—but even as Amanda leans in to hug her, these shadows fade away.

Soon Amanda begins to fade, as well, but not from memory. She’s back home, an excited little girl awaiting her mother’s return from a long, dangerous journey.

I’ll buy her a present , Ripley thinks. I’ll buy her the greatest present ever.

But in the blankness left when Amanda disappears, other figures emerge. Her crew, her friends, and Dallas, her lover.

They look frightened. Lambert is crying, Parker is angry.

And Ash. Ash is…

Dangerous! Ripley thinks. He’s dangerous! But though this is her dream, she cannot warn the others.

And much closer, beneath clean hospital sheets, something is forcing itself from Ripley’s chest.

TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer with almost thirty novels published to date, as well as dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. Recent releases include Coldbrook, Into the Void: Dawn of the Jedi (Star Wars), Reaper’s Legacy, and The Sea Wolves (with Christopher Golden). Future novels include Contagion and The Silence. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award.

Fox 2000 acquired film rights to The Secret Journeys of Jack London series, and his Toxic City trilogy is in development with ABC Studios. Several other novels and screenplays are also at varying stages of development.

Find out more about Tim at his website

In the future, no one can hear you scream…

A direct follow-up to Alien: Out of the Shadows, this adventure reveals the far-reaching impact of events seen in that novel. It shows the continuing malevolent influence of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, and their inexorable efforts to weaponize the Xenomorph known as the Alien.

JULY 2014

The official novelization of the acclaimed Alien movie.

The crew of the Nostromo, a commercial deepspace mining ship, investigates a mysterious signal. Landing on planet LV-426, they discover a massive extraterrestrial and a nest of strange eggs. They bring back to the ship an Alien which, as it grows, stalks and picks off the crew, one-by-one, until only Ellen Ripley remains.

MARCH 2014

The official novelization of the blockbuster Aliens movie.

Ellen Ripley has been rescued, only to learn that the planet from Alien—where the deadly creature was discovered - has been colonized. But contact has been lost, and a rescue team is sent. They wield impressive firepower, but will it be enough?

APRIL 2014

The official novelization of the famous Alien 3 movie.

Ellen Ripley continues to be stalked by the savage alien race, after her escape pod, ejected from Colonial Marine spaceship Sulaco, crash-lands on a prison planet, killing everyone else aboard. Unknown to Ripley, an alien egg is aboard the ship. The alien is born inside the prison, and sets out on a killing spree.

MAY 2014

ALIEN™: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

Print edition ISBN: 9781781162682

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781162699

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: January 2014

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.

Copyright © 2014 by Tim Lebbon. All rights reserved.

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.