Revelations (9 page)

Captain Constantine sucked in a deep breath of the ocean air, his gaze never leaving Jacob, until finally he nodded to the two sailors carrying him. “To my cabin,” he said brusquely. The sailors disappeared with Jacob back down the tower.

MacAlister posted two armed guards on the observation deck before descending down the conning tower. Emily and the captain had gone below ahead of him and they had been met by the throng of crew eager to learn news of what waited for them beyond the outer hull of the sub.

“As soon as I know more, I will let you know,” the captain was saying, his voice raised to be heard over the barrage of questions. “Right now, I do not have enough information. Mr. Endersby is about to brief us and when we know, you
will
know. Now get back to your posts.”

Emily could tell from the look on the men’s faces that they were not happy, there was even some barely concealed anger on the face of one or two of them. They quieted down when MacAlister stepped off the final rung and eyed them all with an ice-cold stare.

“You heard the captain. Don’t you all have somewhere else you’re supposed to be?”

The group of sailors slowly dispersed, but not without a few furtive glances at the conning tower ladder and the daylight leaking in from above.

The two sailors carried Jacob to the conference room and placed him a little roughly in his wheelchair before waiting to be dismissed by the captain.

When the door closed behind them, the captain spoke, “Okay, in small words so you will be sure we understand
exactly
what you are talking about, Mr. Endersby: What can you tell us about what’s going on out there?”

Jacob had parked himself next to the captain’s small wet bar. Emily watched him pull a bottle of Glenlivet whisky from the shelf and pour himself a shot, downing it in one sharp gulp. He poured another then raised the bottle toward the others but no one wanted to join him. Jacob shrugged.

“Perhaps after you’ve explained what’s happening we might feel the need to partake, but right now, all I want to know is what you know,” Constantine said.

Jacob wheeled himself to the head of the conference table, carefully balancing his glass between his knees. He took a swig of the whisky and began to explain.

“Our climate, our planet, along with every form of life on it, has been co-opted. Every major ecosystem appears to have been manipulated toward supporting some other form of life. In short, we’ve been terraformed.”

“Terraformed?” Emily questioned, her eyebrows furrowed. Constantine and MacAlister looked on with equally questioning expressions.

Jacob wheeled himself back to the wet bar and poured another shot of whisky, spilling some on the surface as he observed the blank expressions on the faces watching him. He sighed deeply and continued.

“We’ve been invaded,” he said, his words beginning to slur around the edges. “You know, like in the movies. Planetary engineering.” He gulped down another mouthful of whisky. “
They
sent the red rain and transformed humanity and most every other life form on this rock into self-assembling biological machines. No need to ship complicated machinery here, like we’d have to do, just send in the red rain and use the indigenous species as the building blocks. Have them follow an encoded blueprint for making bigger, more complex organisms, and
poof
! Out with the old and in with the new.”

Jacob sank the remaining whisky and stared at the empty glass.

“They used those biological machines to build the equivalent of atmospheric processors, the trees Emily saw. And in just days they accomplished what would have taken
decades
for us to have even theoretically achieved. I mean, it is genius. Pure fucking genius. No, it’s bigger than that; it’s fucking God-like. They didn’t even need to come here themselves. Jesus! It’s just magnificent.”

Jacob tipped the empty glass toward his outstretched tongue; when he realized it was still empty he poured another shot into it, this time spilling more on the wet bar than he got in the glass.

While Jacob was speaking, Emily had watched Mac pace back and forth, his normally unfazed demeanor obviously stretched thin by what he was hearing. “You’re telling us Earth has been taken over by an alien race?” she said when Jacob paused to refill his glass.

Jacob shook his head and polished off the shot. “Not
by
some alien race,
for
some alien race. The only question now is who
they
are and when we can expect them to show up.” He paused, then laughed as he reached for the bottle of whisky again. “Wait, that’s two questions,” he said, his words slurring into one.

MacAlister moved to Jacob’s side and took the bottle from his hands. “I think you’ve had just about enough, mate.”

Jacob looked up at the soldier. “I think you could be right,” he said, before letting out a long braying laugh.

“So the rain, the creatures I saw, the alien trees?” Emily said.

The effects of the drink were quickly robbing Jacob of his faculties and his words were becoming indistinguishable.

“That, my dear, dear Emily, is the interesting part. This is just a theory, mind you, so don’t you hold me to it in the morning—” he let out another long laugh “—but
I
think that the rain was some kind of biological super nanotechnology. How it got here, I have
nooooo
idea, but it took every carbon-based life form on this planet, disassembled it molecule by molecule, and then reassembled it in whatever shape it wanted.”

Jacob jabbed at the ceiling with the index finger of his left hand. When he next spoke his voice was conspiratorial. “It gave us what you saw out there. A new world.
Their
world.” He stared at his hand still pointing at the ceiling. “I mean, do you have even the slightest inkling of what that means? Whatever did this to the world is so far ahead of us technologically, it might just as well be God.” He slowly lowered his hand to his lap and turned to face Emily. “I do not feel so good,” he said, his face suddenly turning a shade of green.

“Don’t worry,” said MacAlister with a sigh, “I’ll take care of him. Come on.” He began pushing Jacob out of the room toward the scientist’s cabin. “I’ll get him to his room.”

“We should all be afraid,” Jacob yelled as the Scotsman wheeled him away. “We should all be really fucking afraid.”

“He’ll sleep soundly tonight,” said MacAlister when he returned from taking Jacob to his room. “I expect he’ll have a bit of a hangover in the morning, though.”

“Let’s assume his theory is correct,” Emily said, picking up the conversation where they’d left off before the interruption. “Does it really change anything for us?”

“Our primary objective has not changed. We still need to find a place to pitch our tent, so to speak. Point Loma seems to me to be as good a place as any to do that, wouldn’t you say?”

“From what Commander Mulligan has told us, the chances of finding anywhere unaffected by the storm seem pretty slim and growing slimmer by the day. And if Jacob is right we might be running out of time faster than we know,” Emily said. “And since we’re already here…”

The captain nodded. “Mr. MacAlister, I’d like you to take two men you know can handle themselves and go take a look around our new home. Report back to me if we need to call in a fumigator or not.”

“I’d like to go ashore with them,” Emily interjected.

“Not this time,” MacAlister replied. “Leave it to the experts for now.”

“But—” she began to object.

“No buts, Ms. Baxter,” said the captain. “My men know what they’re doing and you would be nothing but a liability at this point, I’m afraid. Please just let them do their job.”

Emily couldn’t argue with his logic, but the itch to get off the submarine, to stretch her legs on solid ground again was surprisingly strong, even to her. Or maybe it was something else? Even though MacAlister was a professional soldier and had undoubtedly survived numerous firefights and life-threatening situations during his time in the Special Boat Service, she found herself worrying about him. She was the only one with any direct experience of just how alien the world out there really was and how dangerous the creatures that wandered through it could be. And she still was not convinced that even with the evidence they had all seen topside that anyone
really
believed her warnings.

“Alright then, let’s get this show on the road shall we?” MacAlister said, with a clap of his hands and an eager smile, signaling the discussion was over. He moved toward the door.

“MacAlister!” She grabbed the man’s elbow as he walked away. “Be careful. It’s more dangerous than you can possibly imagine out there.”

Emily had expected him to fire back with one of his huge grins and dismiss her warning; instead his face became almost unrecognizable, cold even, grim, and for the first time she saw the warrior who lingered just below the surface of the gentle, funny man she had come to know. When his smile did return it was accompanied with one of his trademark corny quips: “Don’t worry, my middle name is danger.” He paused as the smile spread into the grin she had expected. “Actually, it’s Colin, but if you tell anyone I’ll never bloody talk to you again.”

And with that, he was out the door.

MacAlister picked two sailors to accompany him.

Emily watched nervously from the observation deck of the conning tower as the heavily armed men hauled a large, black rubber dinghy onto the deck, attached a powerful-looking outboard motor to it, and dropped it into the water alongside the sub. MacAlister gave her a thumbs-up before leaping into the boat after his men and speeding off toward the beach.

For the next two hours Emily watched as MacAlister and his men methodically moved from building to building, securing each one before moving on to the next. By the time they completed their initial search of the final building, it had become obvious that the base was completely deserted.

MacAlister’s voice crackled over the radio: “Area is secure and ready to accept its new tenants.”

Captain Constantine nodded silently then adjusted the radio frequency: “Attention all hands: Security team and shore parties, make your way to the deck immediately.”

MacAlister and one of his team stayed on land, positioning themselves on the rooftops of the two tallest buildings, watching over the compound, their weapons held at the ready while the third sailor brought the dinghy back to the sub.

The
Vengeance’s
crew emerged from the belly of the submarine via a hatch that exited onto the deck, chattering excitedly as they shaded their eyes from the bright California sun. But as they spotted the extraordinary transformation that had taken place on land, Emily heard a wave of expletives from the milling crowd of sailors followed by a stunned silence as each new pair of eyes inevitably became fixed on the distant shoreline.

The captain addressed his dumbfounded men from the conning tower. “Alright! Pull yourselves together,” he called out. “You’ll have plenty of time to stare when you are on shore. In the meantime, you have a job to do, and I expect you to do it. Now get on with it.”

At his command, the sailors’ training kicked in and one after another they returned to their allotted tasks. Within minutes a large pile of supplies in waterproof containers had piled up on the deck. A second dinghy was manhandled up top and dropped into the ocean next to the first.