Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (2 page)

Piper sighed, her fingers rifling through a stack of important-looking papers on Meyer’s desk, looking for nothing. She wondered if the Astrals had authored any of these pages. If so, had they committed to paper for human benefit? Or was this human-to-human bureaucracy — the metropolis running as any human city ever had — under human hands, ignoring the alien bosses above?

“I think they’re up to something,” Piper said.

“The people?”

“The jets.”

“Maybe they are. It’s fine. As long as the guard shuttles intercept them outside the borders, there won’t be any debris falling onto people’s homes. That was a mess last time.”

“A
mess?”

“Yes, a mess.” Now he seemed impatient, probably exasperated by Piper’s intrusion. This was classic Meyer, as he’d been even before Astral Day. Clever, intelligent, and occasionally too arrogant to see past his own absurdity. His family was safe, and the overlords had successfully made contact. Now it was time for business.

A klaxon blared. Piper’s heart stuttered at the alarm. Meyer rolled his eyes.

“Goddammit,” he muttered.

“What is it?” Piper yelled above the bray.

Meyer touched his finger to his temple and closed his eyes.

“Meyer!”

“Hang on.”

“Is it the jets? What’s going on?”

“Hang on.” Finger still to temple. Eyes still closed. As if he had all the time in the world.

“Do we need to hide in the — ”

“Piper, if you don’t shut the fuck up, I can’t listen!”

Piper’s eyes were on the hallway, toward the alarm and stomping feet. The house was a place of business during the day, and now she could hear administrators rushing by. She didn’t need to peek at the chaos to imagine the panicked humans rushing about like dumb animals, Titan guards marching into assigned positions. Outside, Reptar peacemakers would be finding their stations, looking hungry.

Piper watched Meyer turn his attention inward, listening to Divinity’s voices in his head as the klaxon filled the home with fear.

His eyes opened. They were the same human eyes Piper had fallen in love with — and yet she fell a step back, nearly as afraid of Meyer as she was of the blaring alarm.

“Yes, they say it’s the jets.” His finger fell from his temple. “But this time, they’ve brought something with them.”

C
HAPTER
2

Trevor heard the blaring alarms and stood from his chair fast enough to knock his water to the floor.

Despite the tumult, Trevor paused to watch the glass shatter. It was okay; he didn’t want the water anyway. He’d been trying for over a year to transition to drinking only water but still didn’t like the taste, forcing himself to hydrate only because his body needed fluids. Supposedly, the systems installed by the Astrals when they’d built Heaven’s Veil did something to flawlessly purify the water, but to Trevor it still tasted fetid. Secretly, he’d have given anything for a Coke. He’d been meaning to flaunt his position as Heaven’s Veil royalty and command a shuttle to seek caches of sweet carbonation in the outlands, but he hadn’t mustered the guts to ask. Speaking to the muscular, white Titans (who supposedly understood English even though they never replied with words) always creeped him out.

Trevor ran to the window. Whatever was happening seemed to be on the home’s other side, so he rushed into the hallway, realizing the irony of running toward the alarm rather than away from it.

Lila burst from her room, and Trevor collided with her, knocking the breath from his lungs.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“I don’t know. Didn’t you look out your window?”

“No.” She sounded rushed, panicked. “Do we need to get to the basement?”

“You
can go to the basement.
I’m
never going into a basement again.”

“Have you seen Raj?”

“Why would I have seen Raj?” Annoying Lila, wasting seconds while something important unfolded. He shoved at her, trying to get into his sister’s room and her precious front-facing window.

“Get out of my way! I don’t care about Raj and his stupid — ”

Trevor stopped when he saw his niece on the floor of Lila’s room behind her, surrounded by letter blocks. “Oh, hi, Clara.” Then, back to Lila, hissing: “Take her downstairs, stay here, find Raj, whatever. Do you know where Mom is?”

“Probably in her house. Or maybe pacing the grounds between like she does.”

“Hi, Trevor,” Clara said from behind Lila, barely audible.

Trevor smiled at the two-year-old. Her voice was small and, when klaxons weren’t blaring, adorable. Even Trevor, as a teen boy, wasn’t immune. Some people were a little afraid of Clara, but Trevor didn’t understand why. So she’d walked early. So she’d talked early. Who cared?

The alarm died. With the air silenced, Trevor could hear a commotion coming from outside Lila’s window. He desperately wanted to see it — partly because it was surely exciting and partly because he was number two around here, the second Dempsey below his father in the media’s eyes. He should be up front, where he could make decisions. Where the cameras could see him.

“Mom’s not at her house. I saw her in the mansion earlier. Downstairs. Talking to Dad.”

“I didn’t see her,” Lila said.

“Hi, Trevor,” Clara repeated.

“Hi, Clara.” Then to Lila: “Go and find Raj, but see if you can track down Mom too. Don’t go outside. You hear me?”

Lila looked like she might protest. She didn’t like taking orders from Trevor, but she’d been exhausted almost nonstop since becoming a mother.

“Fine. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to look out your window. Then I’ll go outside.”

Again, Clara said, “Hi, Trevor.”

Trevor nodded to Lila then crossed the extravagant bedroom to greet his niece while approaching the window. He patted her on the head as he passed. Trevor was beyond her, halfway to the window and able to see the first fireworks outside, when Clara said, “Don’t be afraid.”

Trevor turned back. Lila’s arms were out, reaching for Clara to smuggle her downstairs. But Lila had stopped, staring at the blocks around the little girl, her mouth open.

“What did you say?” Trevor asked.

Lila broke her paralysis and lifted Clara into the air, Trevor looked where the girl had been sitting. Where Lila had been staring.

Her blocks were arranged to spell
DECEPTION
.

C
HAPTER
3

Heather saw Meyer striding through the home’s foyer as the alarms fell quiet. Piper chased him like a yappy dog, in heels and a little blue dress.
Surely
, Heather thought,
because that’s how Meyer likes her
.

“Stay inside, Piper.”

“Tell me what you mean!” Piper grabbed his arm. “What ‘new’ do they have? Is it a problem?”

“Stay inside! I’ll handle this!”

But of course, Piper didn’t stay inside. When Meyer went out, she followed. Heather followed too. It was ironic: Heather following Piper for her turn with Meyer, just like in the old days. But then of course, Heather had been there first. And Heather, unlike Piper, wasn’t arm candy, and didn’t dress like she was.

“Meyer,” Heather said, more projecting her voice than shouting.

Two of the bland-faced Titans (Heather sometimes called them “albino Hulks,” always followed by smashing sounds) turned at the sound of her voice. They didn’t twitch toward her any more than they’d twitched toward whatever was happening outside. Heather was permitted to be in the viceroy’s mansion — and just as she must have made sense to them, their lack of action made sense to her. Heather couldn’t tap into their ESP any more than anyone else (although Meyer seemed able), but you didn’t need to know what they were saying inside their minds to see the patterns. Some of the Titans had gone outside without hesitation. These two had stayed inside. Apparently, they weren’t needed. The proper force had been deployed. Nothing with the Astrals, it seemed, was ever wasted. These two seemed to be at work despite explosions on the lawn, puzzling over the meaning of a small glass cube.

“That’s right, you heard me,” Heather said to their unheeding forms as she rushed past and through the open door. “Hulk smash!”

The Titans didn’t respond.

Outside on the lawn, Heather gaped at the sky. The usual immaculate blue was a mess of winding contrails, as if a scattered air traffic controller had been put in charge of the flight paths. Every few seconds, something exploded. She seemed to be seeing planes, rockets, and something else — swirling, twisting things that appeared to have lives of their own.

She stuttered up to Meyer. Piper clung to his arm below the explosive ballet. For a second, Heather hated Piper. Then the flash of hatred vanished, like always.

Meyer seemed to notice Heather’s presence with Piper’s.

“Get inside,” he said to them both.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.” Heather tipped an invisible hat to Piper. “Hey, Piper. Lovely weather, isn’t it?”

“Get back, Heather. You’ll get hurt.”

“You’ll
get hurt too.”

Heather looked at the sky. What had to be rebel rockets weren’t simply exploding on their own; they were being shot down by the round shuttles tasked with protecting Heaven’s Veil. The spheres were zipping about faster than her eye could follow, homing in on the contrails, seeming to reach out for the altered rockets and breaking them like sticks. The sky dance seemed effortless, but still shrapnel rained onto the city beyond the lawn. She could hear it striking roofs, landing on concrete — or whatever the aliens called the modified stone they’d laid for streets.

“I won’t get hurt,” he said.

“Because you’re Superman?”

Meyer turned and glared at Heather. His eyes, usually green, seemed almost gray. She’d seen that happen in the past, well before the Astral telescopes had spotted the approaching fleet of spheres. You didn’t mess with Meyer Dempsey when he gave you that look. Business rivals trembled beneath it.
Even hungry wolves
, Heather thought,
might do the same if they found him in the wilderness
.

“Get inside.
Now
. You too, Piper.”

Heather paused long enough to let Meyer know she wouldn’t go easily then began walking backward, keeping an eye on the skies. Piper did the same, and Heather took her hand. What she’d taken for Piper’s subservient fear, she now realized, was conflict. Piper wasn’t terrified. She was something else.

“You okay?” Heather asked.

“No.”

“Meyer?” Heather’s one-word question carried thousands of smaller queries inside it.

“He’s right, you know,” Piper said, now looking at her husband’s back. He was at the front of the sprawling lawn, a dozen feet from the palatial home’s front gate, in the middle of nothing, wholly exposed. His body language held all the mortal terror of a man waiting for a bus.

“About what?” Heather asked.

“He
won’t
get hurt.”

“How do you know that? I have half a mind to go out there and haul his ass back in here. If a stray explosion doesn’t hit him, an on-purpose one will. If I were out there with the rebellion, my first target after the aliens would be their chief toady.”

“I
don’t know he won’t get hurt,” Piper said, “but
he
does.”

Heather wanted to reply that Meyer didn’t know dick, but she’d felt his changes. He couldn’t see the future, but sometimes it seemed like he could
calculate
it just the same. The shuttles were intercepting rockets from the jets and from bunkered installations past the city’s edge — but keeping up with the rockets wasn’t challenging at all. If the Astrals knew which weapon would strike where next, then Meyer knew, too.

“He’s full of shit,” Heather said anyway, glaring at Meyer’s stoic back. “Where’s his adoring public to witness this? Out carving effigies?” She turned to Piper, scooting them back as a ball of fire bloomed overhead. Then, less bitingly, she asked, “What did he say this is?”

“I saw the jets and told him. He wasn’t bothered at all. Then the alarm started, and he told me they had something new this time.”

“By ‘they,” you mean the rebellion.”

Piper nodded.

“Who are we rooting for here, Piper? Us or them?” Heather pointed at the jets. At the human pilots trying to save humanity while Heather and Piper watched its eclipse.

“
Them
or them,” Piper corrected.

Heather looked up. There was another explosion — one more rocket intercepted on its hurtling path toward the mothership. The next few rockets struck the giant sphere, but did less damage than the Black Monday nukes.

The jets were still streaking by in a taunt, staying beyond city airspace. Heather looked toward the trees and hills at the horizon. She followed a few of the stray contrails toward their hidden, secondary sources: rockets fired from pits, trucks, or mobile launchers. A coordinated attack on the ships above Heaven’s Veil in Colorado using intelligent weapons that were, of course, useless as anything else.