Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (5 page)

Lila had no idea whether those had been F-14s or if Christopher was talking out of his ass. She decided not to ask herself how the rebellion had secured F-14s or anything like them, or what other aces they might still have in their deck.

“I think they’re increasing the number of peacekeepers. Not just cops.”

“You mean Reptars?”

“What else would I mean?”

Christopher looked like he wanted to slide beside Lila. Instead, he glanced at the door and stayed where he was.

“I just don’t buy that name. Peacekeepers. They’re more like animals.
Dangerous
animals.”

“I think that’s the point,” Lila said.

“That the city is patrolled by animals?”

“That they’re dangerous.”

Christopher sighed then picked at his black uniform pants leg, looking out the window. Lila could see the Apex’s transparent blue form beyond him, the pyramid’s partially finished side eclipsing the window’s left quarter.

“Oh, just ask what you’re here to ask, Chris.”

“I’m here to see you.”

“And we’re going to sit like diplomats. Sounds like a fun date.”

“Wanna go to the coffee shop?”

Lila almost laughed. It was such a normal, average, ordinary thing to say. Problem was, these had stopped being normal, average, ordinary days a long time ago. To Meyer, the reestablishment of human trade, commerce, and global communication made perfect sense because he kept saying the Astrals were here to understand and observe humanity — to help it improve as a species. But Lila, to whom that sounded like the thickest of bullshit, thought the idea of grabbing a coffee in a city watched over by an alien mothership and patrolled by alien animals was like singing in sinking lifeboats. Her odd sense of prescience had departed with Clara’s birth, but she couldn’t shake a strong mental image of cows fattened for slaughter, or masses kept dumb by social opiates. Getting coffee under the eye of Reptar peacekeepers didn’t feel any different to Lila than joining one of the new religious orders and lending help to build their absurd effigies in the wasteland.

“I want you to tell me what’s on your mind,” she said.

“What makes you think I have some evil intention in being here?”

“Because you
always
have evil intentions.”

“Like how I shot my way into your house just to get into your pants?”

Lila snorted laughter and covered her mouth, big eyes darting to the hall.

“Okay, fine,” he said, shifting in the chair. “The guys are bugging me for information.”

“And by guys, you mean Terrence.”

“Mainly Terrence.”

“And he wants to know … what, exactly?”

“Trevor said your dad said something about digging.”

“Digging? I don’t know anything about digging.”

“
Nothing
?”

“Why does Terrence want to know?”

“You know how Terrence is,” Christopher said. “He’s curious.”

Lila raised an eyebrow. “Why is he always so curious?”

“He just is.”

Lila turned her hands over, palms up. “Well, I don’t know anything about digging. Tell Terrence to ask Trevor.”

“He did. That’s all Trevor knew.”

“Then he can ask my dad.”

Christopher looked at Lila as if to say,
Touché.
Maybe what Terrence wanted to know was for public consumption and maybe he was being nosy, but Christopher’s look now told Lila that he didn’t particularly want the viceroy to know he was curious.

There was a knock at the open door. Lila flinched.

“Hey, Trevor,” Christopher said, turning after a flinch of his own.

Trevor looked embarrassed. He’d known about Christopher and Lila from the beginning. He’d always liked Christopher more than he liked Raj, and that gulf had doubled after his new brother-in-law adopted his current position under Meyer. But he still didn’t like lying — or thinking about his sister and one of his best friends having sex.

“Hey, Christopher.” Then: “Have either of you seen Piper?”

Lila shrugged. She didn’t track her stepmother at all hours. “No.”

Christopher shook his head.

“Why are you looking for her?” Lila asked.

“Because nobody’s seen her since the attack,” Trevor said. “She’s gone, and nobody has any idea where she is.”

A terrible noise swelled from outside and killed her response.

Lila thought she knew what it was but had no desire to find out for sure.

C
HAPTER
6

“Penny for your thoughts, kiddo?”

Cameron was outside, sitting atop a picnic table between the half-cliff lab and the old ranch house he’d once shared with Piper — as cohabiting civilians at first, then as lovers once they’d finally stopped kidding themselves. They’d lived in that house for three months before the mothership had taken her. That riddle, at least, had been solved in short order. The motherships connected to their stone network and began to colonize. Communications resumed, making it immediately obvious who’d become Queen of Vail — of Heaven’s Veil, today.

Cameron turned to the voice behind him. It was Benjamin. He wanted to sigh at his father’s choice of words, but that wouldn’t be fair. Benjamin was just doing his best. The way he always had, even back when Cameron had abandoned him to his ancient rocks and dreams of little gray men. He’d been right about the rocks. The little gray men? So far, not so much.

“Dan used to call me that, you know,” Cameron said.

“Penny?”

“Kiddo. The penny for thoughts thing — that was Mom’s expression. It’s like you have nothing of your own.”

“I used to tell you bedtime stories about carbon-dating limestone.”

“Just sit down, Dad.”

Benjamin looked touched as he took a seat. Cameron sometimes still referred to his father as “Benjamin” or “Ben” when he talked about him to others but usually didn’t refer to him as anything when they spoke directly. Calling him Benjamin to his face felt cold, but “Dad” always felt too familiar. It wasn’t lost on Cameron’s father that a few years of reacquaintance was all it took to begin healing the gulf between them. Given a decade, they might share a hug.

“You know someone has to try getting into Heaven’s Veil, Cam.”

“I figured. I assume it’s going to be me?”

“Charlie wouldn’t last a day. I need Danika to help run the lab. The other assistants might consider it an imposition on their jobs. It’s not worth the money I don’t pay them anymore. It’s down to you or Ivan, and I doubt you think Ivan leading this is any better an idea than I do.”

Benjamin had situated himself on the bench seat. Cameron was on the top, feet where his ass should be. He wondered if it was an improvement or a worsening of their relationship that Benjamin assumed Cameron should be the one to cross the 250 miles to Heaven’s Veil. On one hand, it was a dangerous trip that Cameron had already taken twice, there and back, on his old man’s request, and the kind of thing most fathers would try to protect their sons from. On the other, something lit a little inside Cameron whenever he was included in the unfolding plans. It’s how he and his dad had been in his teen years. It meant he’d been forgiven for walking off, for leaving one father behind to find another in his agent, Dan.

“Ivan would go in with guns blazing,” Cameron said.

“He wants to stay anyway, to coordinate the resistance. But you ask me, they need controlling more than coordinating. Anyone who prefers living here in the outlands and declares him-or herself a revolutionary is questionable.” He waved the idea away. “Bah, that’s not fair. I’m sorry. They’re good and noble people.”

He didn’t say more, but Cameron could read a bloom of guilt on his father’s face. The people who’d died in the failed raid — the one Benjamin had agreed to, even though Ivan had dreamed it up — wore heavy on his conscience. The lab and the group of rabble rousers had always worked toward the same basic goals but remained fiercely independent. Benjamin’s small crew needed the lab and found the Moab ranch land worthy of their intense study, but the revolutionaries feared it. This property was an alien place and always had been, from its haunted grounds to the plugged-up money pit under the stone arch.

Cameron looked across the flat landscape, then the miles-wide sky. He’d come to this place through the canyon, and at that time, the vast openness had sneaked up on him. It had taken months to get used to the wide-open skies. Everything felt so unprotected. But the point had been moot on arrival; there’d been a mothership over this place. Today, the ships didn’t seem to care about it at all. As if to put a fine point on his thoughts, Cameron saw the tiny silver flash of a shuttle passing in the far distance, out on patrol. The shuttles had come here, too. He felt almost insulted by the spheres’ blasé attitude toward the ranch.

“You know,” Cameron said, “most fathers and sons aren’t like this.”

“Aren’t like this how?”

“One always leaving. One always sending the other away.”

“Oh, I don’t know that it’s so bad.” Benjamin shifted on the bench, watching a second far-off shuttle as if they were at this table to have a picnic in better times. “We live together. We work together. We’re seeking common goals. We collaborate.”

Cameron wondered if his subconscious mind was trying to pick a fight — if he wanted to find a way to be angry so he could justify leaving … which, he’d realized over the past half hour, he very much wanted to do. Benjamin was right; they
were
close right now. Cameron
shouldn’t
want to leave. Even though Cameron had already figured out that he’d be going to Heaven’s Veil, he wanted that announcement — that command and order — to come from his father. If it was Benjamin’s decision, Cameron would
have
to go. He wouldn’t be going because he desired it. The old guilt of leaving the first time was still too pungent a memory.

But he
did
desire it. He
did
want to leave. And his reason had nothing to do with the mission.

“It’s fine. I can go,” Cameron said.

“Ivan’s already talked to Saul. Three of his people will go with you.”

“No,” Cameron said. “I’ll go alone.”

“Cam … ”

“I’m faster alone. You taught me to hide and keep a low profile, and I got damn good at it.”

“Last time, you had — ”

“ — Vincent, Dan, and Terrence,” Cameron finished. “How did that work out?”

“You can’t possibly be blaming yourself for Vincent and Dan. You weren’t even there when — ”

“Oh, I agree it doesn’t make sense. Or change my feelings. You sent Vincent and Terrence to meet up with us. And Dan … ” Cameron sighed. “Well, Dan stuck with me for long after he should have. You sent
me
to Meyer’s ranch, and they were only there to help. Whether it’s my fault or not, they were there because of me. This time, I go alone or not at all.”

“Then don’t go.”

Cameron gave his father a look. He’d never been good at bluffing.
Of course
Cameron would go. It wouldn’t be an assault, so an army wasn’t required. Just intelligent reconnaissance and a good pair of hands. They’d tried repeated assaults. The Astrals didn’t so much as bother seeking the source to stop further incursions. Their best brute force efforts were
that
insignificant. This last attack — on the blue pyramid rather than on the impervious ships — was supposed to change things, but again they’d been swatted like flies.

“Fine,” Benjamin said, looking down at his hands. “Go alone.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, if you’re ready. I always assumed someone would need to go in. I didn’t think Ivan’s stunt —
our
stunt, I suppose — would be some sort of death blow, but I did believe that it might buy some time. Seeing as it didn’t even start so much as a street side trash fire, I feel the clock ticking. I have since they started building the Apex, and look how quickly it’s progressing. If they’re working this quickly on the visible structure, I worry they’ll be working as fast underground.”

“But why would they build a big thing like that to dig under it? How do you even know that’s what they’re doing?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Why did they wait? If they wanted to dig up this old thing, why didn’t they start when they got here? Or the minute they docked at the capitals?”

“Charlie thinks they needed to establish their colonies to control the capitals first. And if the Hammer is down there, it might be inside a larger structure. Something they need to excavate the door of, and feel no hurry to do in the way we might.

“But
why
, Dad? Why about
all
of it? You told me — me and Piper, actually — that there are records in the past of mass die-offs, but — ”

“Mass
exterminations
,” Benjamin corrected.

“ — but if they’ve just come here to … I don’t know … just
wipe us out,
then why the stone network? Why the abductions? Why go to all the trouble to narrow it down to the Nine? Why set up the capitals, the outposts, the patrols, all of it? I mean, shit, there are planes in the air again. The Internet is back. Why colonize if they only want to find the master kill switch and erase us all?”