Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent Read online

  “That was the scene in California’s Mojave Desert five years ago—our historic first view of the Newcomer’s ship . . .”

  Thus began ALIEN NATION™

  —the groundbreaking and thought-provoking television series that was part science fiction, part hard-hitting police drama, and critically praised for taking on tough social issues.

  Now the excitement, action, and intrigue of that acclaimed series continues in an all-new line of original novels, beginning with the exciting untold story of how it all began.

  Los Angeles, the present. Rookie detective Matt Sikes begins his first murder investigation and stumbles onto a deadly conspiracy that threatens his life, his daughter, and his world. At the same time, onboard a nightmarish starship hurtling toward the Earth’s sun, Stangya Soren’tzahh—a courageous Tenctonese slave destined to become Detective George Francisco—is swept into his peoples’ last desperate struggle for freedom against the ruthless and mysterious Overseers.

  When the great ship lands on Earth, the future of the Tenctonese and all humanity depends on two unlikely heroes, Matt and George—who must work together for the first time to prevent a disaster that could destroy both their peoples.

  "I Knew Your Ship Was

  Coming,” Matt Sikes Said,

  the words sticking in his throat. He drove through the night, an alien beside him, thinking of the desert, the first time. The fear.

  “But . . . that’s impossible,” Cathy said.

  Sikes shook his head, eyes on the road, seeing the streets of the city as they had been six years ago. “I wish it had been impossible,” he said, and he meant it. Maybe things would have been different right now if things had been different back then. Before the desert. Before Sam. The first Sam.

  “How did you know?” Cathy asked quietly. Her hand sought him, touching his arm softly.

  Sikes shifted in his seat. Even with the shortcuts, they were still a long way from the medical center where the ambulance had taken Susan and Emily, where George waited. There would be time.

  “It was my first case,” he began. “My first day as detective.” And the years unrolled as quickly as the waiting city flew by, as Matt Sikes remembered the beginning . . .

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  A Pocket Star Book published by

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  TM & © 1993 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

  ALIEN NATION is a trademark of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-73599-3

  First Pocket Books printing March 1993

  POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  To those who welcomed us on our own

  Day of Descent:

  Lydia & Arthur, who invited us in,

  Brynne & Michael, who fed us,

  and Geri & K.W., who keep asking us to leave.

  Aim see terrata yas rifym vacwa vots tla, dudes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Alien Nation first appeared as a 1988 movie written by Rockne S. O’Bannon. In that production, the roles of Matt Sikes and George Francisco were originated by James Caan and Mandy Patinkin.

  On September 19, 1989, the Fox Television Network broadcast the two-hour pilot episode of the Alien Nation television series. This new incarnation of the Newcomer saga was developed by Kenneth Johnson and was brought to life through the talents of many fine writers—including Tom Chehak, Diane Frolov, Kenneth Johnson, Steve Mitchell, Andrew Schneider, and Craig Van Sickle—as well as a splendid new cast, including Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint, who further developed the roles of Matt and George, along with Michele Scarabelli as Susan, Sean Six as Buck, Terri Treas as Kathy, Ron Fassler as Byron Grazer, and James Green as Uncle Moodri—all of whom appear in these pages.

  For this book, we have referred to many of the contributions made by the writers for both the movie and television versions of Alien Nation. Where contradictions existed we chose to adhere to the more recent television continuity.

  In particular, we have drawn upon the work of Steve Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle, writers of the episode titled “The Game,” in which many of the first tantalizing hints of the Day of Descent originally came to light. In this novel, the holding cell scenes involving George, his brother Ruhtra, the Overseer Coolock, and the Game are based on the script of that episode.

  “Green Eyes,” the final (so far) episode of Alien Nation, broadcast on May 7,1990, was planned to be the first half of a two-part “cliffhanger,” and the framing action of our novel takes place in the brief minutes occurring between the end of “Green Eyes” and the beginning of its direct sequel, “Dark Horizons,” in which the fate of the Francisco family is resolved. Though “Dark Horizons” is yet to be filmed, both episodes will appear together as an upcoming novel, as will additional, as yet unproduced scripts. As Matt Sikes has come to realize, the story of the Tenctonese on Earth isn’t over yet.

  Our thanks to our editor, Kevin Ryan, for inviting us to take part in this third incarnation of the Newcomer saga. Now we know what all those phone calls just to “talk about” the show were all about. We also thank David Kurtz, composer of the series’ main title theme, for kindly searching his files for the original lyrics to “Ee take naz nahj?” handwritten by Ken Johnson. And we are deeply indebted to the noble self-sacrifice of the members of the fabled Rubber Ears Society (even those who didn’t know they were members) who toiled endlessly to provide us with insights into the obscure naming traditions of Tenctonese culture—another stunning proof of Hodgkins’s Law.

  J & G

  EE TAKE NAZ NAHJ

  ee take naz

  NAH SOOS GAH NIL PAH ET

  nahj

  EE TAKE NAZ NAHJ

  nah soos gah

  NAH SOOS GAH NIL PAH

  nil pah gah nil pah

  EE TAKE NAZ NAHJ

  ee take naz

  NAH SOOS GAH NIL PAH ET

  nah soos gah nil pah et

  EE TAKE NAZ NAHJ

  ee ee take naz

  NAH SOOS GAH NIL PAH

  nah soos gah nil pah

  AH AHHH

  ah ahhh

  EE TAKE NAZ NAHJ

  ee take naz

  NAH SOOS GAH NIL PAH AH

  nah soos gah nil pah

  ahhh ahhh ahhh

  AHHHHHH

  ahhh ahhh ahhh

  AHHH AHHHHHH

  NAH SOOS

  nah soos

  GAH NIL PAH

  gah nil pah

  nah soos

  NAH SOOS GAH NIL

  gah nil pah

  GAH NIL PAH

  gah nil pah

  GAH NIL PAH

  AHHH AHHH AHHH AH

  ahhh ahhh ahhh ah

  AHHHHHHYA

  ahhh ahhhya

  —KENNETH JOHNSON

  P R O L O G U E

  IT WAS THE SHIP.

  It had no other name. It had thousands.

  From Tencton legends, it was lesh, the hell where the flesh of those who turned their eyes from the three moons was seared in waves of salt water, only to be restored with each rising of the sun.

  It was am dugas, the pit that tempted Celine from Andarko, from which only their love had saved them.

  It was the wask’l reckwi, the knowing death of ancient times for
those who died yet remained forever awake to the darkness that trapped them in an eternity of remembrance of the evil they had done.

  And there were other names, their numbers legion, more ancient than any Tencton legend and not from any Tencton language. Words of hatred and fear and despair and helplessness that came from the languages of other races that had been cargo in its hull, now ghosts whose death cries still echoed from the bulkheads, whose terror still pulsed through the choking air like the fluttering heartsbeat of a hunted animal run to ground.

  How many eons this abomination had plied the dark ranges was unknown. Some legends said the race that had built this ship and the uncounted others like it in its fleet were long extinct. Whatever the truth was, the race that commanded them now was also unknown. In fact, in fearful, furtive conversations, sometimes it was whispered that the race that commanded had never existed, that the ships themselves were the sentient force behind the evil they propagated between the worlds—vast, formless things mindlessly cutting through space, decimating entire worlds and cultures, transplanting billions of beings for unknowable motives beyond commerce or greed or conquest.

  In those whispers the ship’s name was despair—despair that all that happened to those on board happened without reason.

  It was abandonment. It was futility. It was the absence of all purpose—for good or for evil. It was the complete negation of all cause.

  Pain.

  Punishment.

  Oblivion.

  The ship.

  And it was the sum of George Francisco’s existence.

  George Francisco pressed his hands against the smooth glass of the hospital observation window, six years free from the ship but never free from his memories of it. Yet now he looked into a vacuum even less forgiving than space, a void that was threatening to engulf him forever, yet end nothing.

  Beyond the window, bathed in the soft purple glow of life-giving ultraviolet, misted in cool billows of soothing nitrogen, lay what remained of his new life and new destiny. On the charts clipped to their beds their human names were given: Emily Francisco. Susan Francisco. But to the watcher at the window they were his daughter and his wife and part of the reason for his life itself.

  And this new world, this cruel planet and the aliens who called it home, even now were taking that reason from him.

  George leaned his cheek against the window. Felt through the glass, the hum of the nitrogen misters reminded him of the subtle hull vibration of the ship’s stardrive. Six years of freedom and nothing had changed—he and his people were still slaves to patterns unrecognized and forces unknown. The Day of Descent had not brought freedom after all. It had simply been the day that they had traded one ship for another. The only difference was that this new ship had a name.

  The planet Earth.

  “Has the doctor come out yet?”

  George turned at the sound of his son’s voice. Finiksa, whom the humans had named Buck for some unknown reason, cradled the soft and bundled form of his sleeping baby sister in his arms. The girl child, almost three months old, was named Vessna, in memory of her mother’s mother. Alone among her family, she had no human name, as if her own heritage would be strong enough to serve her and her future born of Earth and Tencton. George bitterly recalled those so-recent days of optimism when the pod he had carried had finally hatched and Vessna had become the first of his children whom he had actually birthed himself. Then there had seemed to be a future for his people in this place. Now he saw those days for what they truly were—days of blindness, denial, degradation. George shook his head at his son—a human gesture they had all picked up almost subliminally, for there was so much that was negative here. “The doctor is still in with them,” he said.

  In the isolation room beyond the window a human doctor moved like a ghost through the purple mist, cloaked in a white lab coat, wearing protective UV goggles that made his alien expressions more difficult to interpret than usual.

  “They should let us go in,” Buck said. There was no disguising the anger in his voice, or the concern. He had still not realized how important it was to hide how he felt from humans. But George had learned that lesson a long time ago, the lessons of all slaves, no matter what their ship: The less one gave of himself, the less there was to have taken away.

  George held his knuckles to his son’s temple in shared grief. As father and son they shared almost the same pattern of red-brown cranial spots, but in Buck’s dark eyes there was so much of his mother. “The doctor is afraid that they might still be contagious. It would be unsafe for us to go in.”

  Buck held Vessna to him tightly. His eyes burned into the isolation room with the fire of the stars seen in superluminal space. “Nothing on this sl’mym planet is safe,” he said.

  “Nothing anywhere is safe,” George said. He touched a gentle finger to Vessna’s tiny perfect fist, curled in fitful sleep. The scent of her, so fresh, so pure, drove away the awful stench of the so-called antiseptics and cleansers and heat-broken lipids that permeated this place. He wondered what he and Susan had been thinking of to bring a child into a world like this. How could he ever keep the promise of Vessna’s birth for her? How could he give her life when there was nothing waiting for her here but—

  In the isolation room Susan cried out.

  The pigmented borders of George’s spots constricted in sudden alarm, bringing a tingling tightness to the smooth and hairless expanse of his scalp. He pressed his hands against the glass, so close to his love, so powerless to save her. Stars passing by, detached, removed, beyond all hope.

  Susan’s voice was muffled, but some words were clear. “Finiksa! Ee, nteega . . . nteega kat nos eeb!” She sat up in her bed, her arms reaching out for a memory of her own, her eyes unseeing of the present, trapped only in the past.

  And George knew what she saw, knew what she felt, because he had heard her cry those words before. Don’t take my baby! In the ship. When they had come for Buck.

  “She’s calling for me,” Buck said beside him. “I have to go to her.”

  From the room where the doctor was trying to ease Susan back against her pillows: “Nteega kat nos eeb!”

  George took Buck into his arms, turning his son’s eyes from the scene of his mother caught in the delirium of her fever. “No,” George said. “She does not know you are here.”

  He felt Buck tremble in his embrace. “She’s calling my name.”

  From the room: “Finiiiksaaa!”

  “She cannot see us.”

  Buck tried to free himself, and in his struggle George felt a sudden wave of mortality as he sensed his son’s muscles had become almost powerful enough to pull away from his grip. No longer a child. Almost an adult. Soon he would need a future of his own.

  But not yet.

  Susan called out again, plaintive, heartsbreaking. George tightened his arms around his son and baby daughter, and for now the strength of his arms, and of his love, was invincible.

  “Please, Buck, please,” George said. “I do not want to lose you, too.”

  With those words George felt his son’s body relax, and he did not know which emotion had more power over him—the relief he felt that his son would still obey him, or the sudden realization that the emptiness he had felt just moments earlier was not yet absolute.

  George did not wish to lose his son and infant daughter.

  He still had something left to lose. Something worth keeping.

  Somewhere within him there must still be hope.

  “We should never have come here,” Buck said angrily. “Back on the ship, when we still had a choice, we should never have come here.”

  Instantly George looked around to see if any human had been near enough to hear his son’s intemperate words. The matter had been settled long ago in Quarantine by those Elders who knew everything that had transpired to bring the Tenctonese to this world. Their decision had been clear and absolute: There were some things humans were not meant to know.

  But there were no hu
mans present other than the doctor in the isolation room beyond the glass window, where Susan once again lay silent and unmoving on her bed. “Shhh,” George whispered to his son. “You know that is not something we should discuss here.”

  Buck drew back from his father, and George, sensing that the moment of youthful rebellion had passed, released his hold.

  “But you know it’s true, don’t you?” Buck said. “You know it was a mistake to come here. All we did was trade one ship for another.”

  George stiffened. It was one thing for him to think such thoughts. But to hear it come from his child . . . that was wrong. Buck was too young to feel that way. He couldn’t feel that way. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t—

  “No, Buck. Don’t say that.”

  Buck’s eyes bore into his father’s. “It’s what I feel, Apod. And it’s what you feel, too, isn’t it?”

  George blinked. His son had called him Apod, not Pod. Father, not Dad. A sign of formality that hinted at the growing rift between them. George thought again of the slave’s lesson—the less one has, the less there is to take away—and understood that Buck was attempting to distance himself from his father and his family. Cutting himself off now to prevent someone or something else from doing it for him later.

  Did it have to come to this? George thought. Six years free from the ship, and we still act like slaves, not because of this alien world but because the fear the ship created still exists within us?

  George looked back into the isolation room. The doctor was palpating Emily’s droonal flanges. It struck George that it was a miracle that a human knew enough to do that. It bespoke of hundreds of hours in classrooms, learning Tenctonese physiology and medicine. Why? he wondered. Humans still had so much to learn about their own medical needs. Why had this one, and hundreds of others, made the effort to learn about the Tenctonese?

  “This world isn’t like the ship,” George said. Whether he was speaking for himself or his son, he wasn’t sure.

  “You know they’re in there because of terts!” Buck said.