She smiled. “I’d like to think that’s true.”
His expression was suffused with affection. “Sleep well.”
She raised a hand toward him. “Walter—thank you. For everything. You’re crew, and I don’t know what kind of a future there will be for you once the colony is established, but I know there’ll be something. I don’t care what the regulations say. I’ll see to it myself.”
At his touch on the external controls, the pod canopy closed. He hit the control to activate hypersleep. Her eyes were locked on his as the narcotic steam began to fill the pod.
“I know you will, Danny, but even if you can’t do anything for me, I’ll love you just the same.”
When the steam cleared, she was fast asleep. He wondered if she would dream. If so, he wondered if he would be in it. That last moment, those last words—did she know? Had she retained, at the last, just enough cognizance to comprehend?
The thought that she would dream of him was pleasurable.
Carefully, he brushed at his hair, adjusting the one remaining memory of his twin. When he spoke, his voice was slightly different. The tiniest difference in tone, in accent. Both meaningful.
“Mother, please open a secure line with the Weyland-Yutani Corporation headquarters on Earth.”
Indifferent, efficient, responsive, the ship’s computer replied. “It will take some time to establish the link. I will have to refract the signal through numerous sub-relays and wait for advantageous stellar conditions to…”
He cut it off. “I’ll leave the minutiae to you, dear. Let me know when you have the link available. Use security hailing code David 31822-B. And in the meantime, I’d like some music. Richard Wagner. Das Rheingold, act two. The entry of the gods into Valhalla.”
Sweeping, bold music began playing, filling the crew’s hypersleep chamber. With a bit of a spring in his step, he left the room.
There was no one to greet him when he entered the vast holding area that contained the hundreds of colonists in their hypersleep units, but he didn’t mind. Everything was good now. Everything was in its proper place, he told himself, and all was right with the universe.
Just one thing to check on…
Pulling open one of the embryo containment drawers, he first checked the unformed human capsules to ensure all life indicators were normal. Satisfied that they were, he switched his attention to the three tiny eggs that had been recently ensconced nearby. They bore no relation to the embryos beside them. Nor, for that matter, to anything else on board the Covenant.
Reaching down, he touched each one gently with a fingertip. They pulsated slightly at the contact. Pleased, he carefully closed the drawer.
Turning, he walked out into the holding room, gazing contentedly down at row upon row of sleeping colonists. His colonists. His subjects. He smiled.
His future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in New York City in 1946, Foster was raised in Los Angeles. After receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA (1968, 1969) he spent two years as a copywriter for a small Studio City, CA advertising firm.
His fiction career began in 1968 when August Derleth bought a long Lovecraftian letter of Foster’s and published it as a short story. Sales of short fiction to other magazines followed. His first attempt at a novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, was bought by Betty Ballantine and published by Ballantine Books in 1972.
Since then, his published oeuvre includes excursions into hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He has produced the novel versions of many films, including Star Wars, the first three Alien films, Alien Nation, The Chronicles of Riddick, Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, and both Transformers films. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards in Spain and Russia.
Besides traveling he enjoys listening to both classical music and heavy metal. Other pastimes include basketball, hiking, body surfing, scuba diving, and weight lifting. He and his wife reside in Prescott in a house built of brick salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miners’ brothel, along with assorted dogs, cats, fish, several hundred houseplants, and the ensorcelled chair of the nefarious Dr. John Dee.
THE COMPLETE ALIEN™ LIBRARY
FROM TITAN BOOKS
by Alan Dean Foster
Alien
Aliens™
Alien 3
Alien: Covenant
Alien Resurrection by A. C. Crispin
Out of the Shadows by Tim Lebbon
Sea of Sorrows by James A. Moore
River of Pain by Christopher Golden
by Tim Lebbon
Predator™: Incursion
Alien: Invasion
Alien vs. Predator™: Armageddon
Aliens: Bug Hunt
Edited by Jonathan Maberry
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4 (June 2017)
Volume 5 (December 2017)
Volume 6 (June 2018)
Volume 7 (December 2018)
Alien: The Archive
Alien: The Illustrated Story
The Art of Alien: Isolation
Alien Next Door
Alien: The Set Photography
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Copyright
ALIEN™: COVENANT
Print edition ISBN: 9781785654787
E-book edition ISBN: 9781785654794
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: May 2017
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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 responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
TM & © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.