Earthfall: Retribution (21 page)

‘I don’t think you mean that,’ Jay said.

‘How do you know what I mean?’ Sam replied, irritated.

‘Hey, chill. I’m just saying that if we’re really just about to go up against this Talon guy, maybe you want to talk to him now. You might not get the chance later, you know.’

‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ Sam said, staring at the floor. ‘I just can’t shake this feeling that my whole life has been a lie and he knew all along and kept the truth from me.’

‘So go and get the truth now,’ Jay said, ‘while you still can.’

Sam stared at Jay for a moment and then stood up with a sigh. ‘OK, you’re right.’ He looked over at the doorway.

‘Aren’t I always?’ Jay said with a grin.

Sam walked into the forward section where Suran and Stirling were engaged in hushed conversation. Stirling glanced up at Sam as he approached.

‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ Stirling said. ‘I should imagine you have much to discuss.’

Sam watched as Stirling left the room, turning back to Suran just as the alien creature shifted into his human form.

‘Hello, Sam,’ his dad said. ‘I suppose you don’t like me very much right now.’

‘Please don’t use that face,’ Sam said, frowning. ‘It was just a mask all along.’

‘You’re wrong,’ his dad replied. ‘I used this form to infiltrate the Foundation, but it became far more than just an assumed identity to me. I spent years in this body, I fell in love with your mother in this body and then I fell in love with you and your sister. It may not have been the life I was born to, but it came to mean just as much to me nevertheless. I’m not fighting the Voidborn to save the Illuminate any more – I’m fighting them to save humanity. This is my home now.’

‘Maybe that’s all true,’ Sam said, ‘but you’ve been lying to me my whole life. You can’t expect me just to forget that. Please, change back.’

Sam’s father stared at him for a moment and then shifted into his Illuminate form.

‘I never intended to hurt you,’ Suran said. ‘You have to understand that my people are gone. We may never retrieve the Heart, at least not before the Voidborn have destroyed it and, even if we do, we no longer have the technology to awaken them again. It could take centuries for the Illuminate to return to what it once was and maybe even then it never should. You, your sister and your mother were my
new
life. Everything I did, I did to protect you, not to reawaken the ghosts of my former home world.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Sam said angrily. ‘I was just a test subject to you. A baby that you could implant with unproven, probably dangerous technology. You didn’t care about me.’

‘I cared for you as much as any father cares for his child,’ Suran replied. ‘We had already adopted your sister. Your mother always wanted children, but I told her that it wasn’t possible. I didn’t tell her that it was because we were not even the same species. That would probably have been unwise.’

‘So, she never knew,’ Sam said.

‘No, there was no reason for her to know,’ Suran said. ‘What good would it have done?’

‘It would have been the truth,’ Sam said, ‘something you’re not very comfortable with, apparently.’

‘Sam, I know this is hard for you,’ Suran replied, ‘but I need your help if we’re going to have any chance of stopping the Voidborn and Talon. This war has already claimed countless trillions of lives. I will not allow it to claim billions more innocent victims. They have to be stopped, and for that I need you to trust me.’

‘That’s a big ask,’ Sam said, staring at the alien features of the creature in front of him, searching for any trace of the man he had once known. ‘Do you have a plan?’

‘Actually, I think I do,’ Suran replied. ‘Though it is dangerous and there is something that I must teach you first. Give me your hand.’

Sam offered his human hand to Suran.

‘No, the other one,’ Suran replied.

Sam held out his golden metallic hand and Suran took it in his own. Suran closed his eyes and a moment later the golden surface turned into perfectly normal human skin.

‘There is much you need to know about your heritage and your abilities,’ Suran said, ‘and I fear I do not have the time to teach you properly. It would be far easier, if you would allow it, if I simply
gave
you the knowledge.’

Sam looked at Suran for a moment and then nodded. Suran reached up and placed his hand on the side of Sam’s head and closed his eyes.

A few minutes later Sam walked out of the forward compartment with Suran following just behind him.

‘OK, listen up, everyone,’ Sam said as all the heads in the room turned in his direction, ‘here’s what we’re going to do.’

The drop-ship swooped low over the Tokyo skyline, banking towards the unmistakeable shape of the Voidborn Mothership that hovered over the centre of the city. Suran looked at the image of the city hanging in the air in the forward compartment of the drop-ship, studying the giant vessel and the swarm of other Voidborn-controlled aircraft.

‘They are greater in number than I had anticipated,’ he said with a frown.

‘Shouldn’t make any difference,’ Sam said, trying to sound as confident as he had when he had outlined their plan to the others. ‘In fact, it may even help.’

‘How close can we get before they detect us?’ Stirling asked.

‘If we do nothing to draw undue attention to ourselves, then we should be able to get close enough for our purposes,’ Suran replied. ‘Superficially, we will appear to them to be just another assault vessel. If they conduct a thorough scan of the vessel, however, its origin will quickly become obvious.’

‘Maybe they’ll just think that their London cousins are popping over for a visit,’ Jay said.

‘If they do detect us, we will be vaporised within seconds,’ Suran replied, not taking his eyes off the display.

‘OK, not a fan of lightening the mood,’ Jay mumbled, rolling his eyes.

‘We are five minutes from our target destination,’ Suran said. ‘I suggest you make final preparations.’

‘Come on,’ Sam said, leading Jay back into the rear compartment where Rachel and Mag were looking down at the weapons spread on the floor.

‘Two rifles, magazines half empty,’ Rachel said, gesturing at the guns at her feet, ‘and one pistol, also with only half a clip. Not exactly a kick-ass arsenal.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sam said, shaking his head. ‘If everything goes according to plan, we won’t need them.’

‘If everything doesn’t go to plan, it’s not as if we’re going to be shooting our way out anyway, let’s face it,’ Jay said, running his hand nervously through his dreadlocks.

‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Sam said.

In the forward compartment something on the view screen caught Stirling’s attention.

‘What on earth is that?’ he said, pointing at the display.

‘That, unless I am very much mistaken, is the primary node for the Voidborn control signal,’ Suran replied. The image on the screen showed the building that had once been the Tokyo Skytree. The six-hundred-metre-tall spire still dominated the skyline of the city, but now its surface was covered in strange black cuboid outcroppings that twinkled with coronas of green light. Pulsing energy cables ran between the huge black blocks, entwined within the tower’s white tubular steel framework, making the massive structure look almost alive. From its peak a bright red crackling stream of energy shot into the sky, vanishing into the clouds above.

‘So that will be Talon’s primary target,’ Stirling said.

‘Presumably, yes,’ Suran replied with a nod.

‘How long before he arrives?’ Stirling asked.

‘It’s hard to say,’ Suran replied. ‘The colony ships are not well suited to atmospheric flight . . . It could be several hours.’

‘More than enough time,’ Stirling said with a nod. ‘You’re certain that we can’t use that thing to wake the Sleepers?’

‘My research would suggest otherwise, Iain, as I suspect yours did too,’ Suran replied.

‘Indeed,’ Stirling said, ‘but it is frustrating to be so close to the root cause of our domination and not be able to do something about it. We just have to protect the node from Talon’s assault. It almost feels like we’re helping the Voidborn.’

‘We are protecting humanity, so that perhaps we can wake them in the future. You know as well as I do that we should not wake all the enslaved simultaneously anyway,’ Suran said. ‘Seven billion frightened people awakening at the same time into a world where the infrastructure barely supported that many people before it was left to decay by the Voidborn? It would mean bloodshed on a scale unpre­cedented in the history of humanity.’

‘So how do we wake them, Daniel?’ Stirling said. ‘Or would you prefer Andrew or maybe Suran?’

‘Daniel is the name you have always known me by,’ Suran replied. ‘I see no need to change that now.’

‘Except it isn’t your name, not really,’ Stirling replied. ‘I would have helped you, you know. If you’d told me the truth. I always wondered how you managed to be one step ahead of my thinking when we worked together. I understand now. I must have seemed like a child to you.’

‘Not at all,’ Suran replied. ‘Your intuitive understanding of Voidborn technology was impressive. You forget that I had slept for aeons before I met you. I was not familiar with much of the technology they were sharing with their human allies in the Foundation. Without you we would never have perfected the implant technology that protects those children from Voidborn slavery.’

‘To think I operated on you to remove your implant,’ Stirling said, shaking his head. ‘You never even needed it, did you? Not to mention the fact that you could have just reached into your head and handed it to me, given your true nature.’

‘That would perhaps have rather startled you,’ Suran replied. ‘There were many things I was forced to do to keep my true identity a secret. The only person who knew the truth was Talon. If we had been discovered, we would have been forced back into hiding at best, hunted down and destroyed at worst. You know that. I didn’t keep things from you because I didn’t trust you; I didn’t tell you because it was the only way to keep you safe. If the Foundation and the Voidborn had learned of our existence, there would have been nowhere safe to hide for anyone we had ever known or cared about. That may have mattered little to Talon, but for me it was not an option. I had allowed myself to become too fond of humanity and the new life they had afforded me.’

‘So, how
do
we save them?’ Stirling asked. ‘How do you wake up seven billion people?’

‘Slowly and carefully, my friend,’ Suran replied, ‘slowly and carefully.’

Back in the rear compartment Sam handed the weapons to Rachel, Jay and Mag.

‘Don’t take any unnecessary risks. For us to have any chance of this working, I need you all in one piece,’ Sam said, ‘and try to keep Stirling alive as well. I know he can be a bit of a pain in the backside sometimes, but he does have his uses.’

‘Message received loud and clear, boss,’ Jay said with a grin.

‘I’m not your boss,’ Sam said.

‘Yeah you are,’ Rachel said, smiling at him, ‘even if you don’t want to admit it.’

‘I still think you’re crazy,’ Mag said, shaking her head. ‘You do realise that there are about ten thousand things that could go wrong with this brilliant plan, don’t you?’

‘That’s better than usual,’ Jay said, ‘much better, actually.’

‘We’re approaching the Mothership,’ Stirling said as he walked into the compartment. ‘You three had better come with me.’

‘The Mothership has brought us into its landing pattern,’ Suran said. ‘It is time.’

Jay, Rachel and Mag followed Stirling into the forward compartment. Suran turned towards Sam as he approached.

‘Time to get this show on the road,’ Sam said.

‘Before we do, I want you to know that I love you as much as I would have loved any biological child,’ Suran said, ‘and I am truly proud of the young man that you have become.’

‘I know,’ Sam replied, looking into the alien creature’s eyes and finally seeing his father looking back at him. ‘Though, if I were you, it’s not me I’d be worried about, it’s Mum. She’ll kill you when she finds out who you really are.’

Suran let out a booming laugh. ‘Indeed,’ he said, smiling at Sam. ‘As you humans say, I believe that we should cross that particular bridge when we come to it.’