Stars Rain Down (14 page)

He floated there in the dark waiting for what he knew was coming. He was the forerunner, and in another moment the rest of his fleet would begin to appear all around him. The other ships. The others like himself.

He was a ship? He was momentarily lost, confused, unsure of who or what he was. Then she was sure. Of course she was a ship, a great and powerful vessel. She was the pride of the
Eireki
fleet. All around, her countless brothers and sisters arrived to fill the void, and joined their voices in a song of light.

She was the queen of that light. Its keystone. Its source and destination. She was the light of stars that danced in the dark of night, and the song of creation that stood before the destroyer.

Her lover came up beside her, the prince of her race who so often wandered the void in solitude. He radiated sadness and sorrow for the destruction soon to come, and for the peace they had failed to attain.

The chance for peace was gone. Now was the time for war.

She bowed to him and pressed forward, and her fleet raced to match. A trillion of her kind cut through the emptiness, blotting out the distant stars and carrying the entirety of the Eireki species aboard them. The Eireki who were creators and protectors, who filled her with love and life and purpose. They filled her with strength unimaginable. She and her crew, bonded through their thoughts, were one.

The enemy also rode in force, and she could feel their blight in the distance. They were the dark and twisted
Nefrem.
The so-called chosen children. They were destroyers, who existed only to devour and pervert the light.

Side by side, the legion of ships and their Eireki crews awaited the coming of the darkest one. The source of the destroyers. Their mother. Their living planet.

And then the enemy came, its arrival thundering across all of creation. The queen of the light bid her fleet to wait, and hide in the shadow of a gas giant. They would attack with the rising sun.

So it unfolded. Glowing and warm, the sun crested the horizon and the Eireki rode into battle. Two surging waves of ships clashed in a rain of furious, burning light, painting the void in rent flesh and the blood of the fallen.

There was death as never before, perhaps as never would be again, leaving both forces annihilated. When the firing stopped, there remained only two combatants: the vast crimson living planet, and she, the Eireki flagship in vibrant green.

She kept her distance, firing on her enemy with beams that shredded space and time with their fury. It wasn't enough. The flesh of the enemy absorbed her fire, and retaliated in kind.

Dancing in the dark of night, she avoided reprisal and sang her song of destruction, raining hell down upon the living planet and expending everything she had. Still, it wasn't enough. There wasn't enough power in the universe.

Then her Eireki crew conceived of a desperate plan. An unthinkable plan. She refused to comply, but they insisted that their lives didn't matter. Nothing could matter except stopping the Nefrem. If they failed, all life would suffer for eternity.

Reluctantly, she accepted.

She wheeled about and charged at full speed, her weapons blazing a path before her. She entered the zone of the living planet's influence, and its tireless psychic scream burnt the minds of her crew. There was no time to mourn. She pressed forward and howled the secret name of death, firing straighter than before.

She struck the enemy hard. Her whole body rocked from the impact but she continued on, and pressed the living planet backward, back into the gas giant, back into the waiting star-seed. Then she fired as she never had, pouring energy beyond comprehension into her foe. Her
hollow-drives
burst under the immense strain, one after another shattering in a fitful luminescent gasp until only one remained. Then the gas giant ignited, and its shock wave flung her to safety.

She had done it. She birthed an artificial star, a fusion furnace that would burn for sixty-five million years, with the last of the Nefrem and their living planet trapped within, a prison from which they couldn't escape. The star would hold them and blind their eyes until it burned out.

She scanned inside herself for any signs of life, but there were none. The last of the Eireki were dead as were all the other ships. She was alone. Empty. Still, there was one task left to complete.

Using the last of her stored energy, she traversed the gulf between stars and arrived at a system whose existence had been carefully concealed from the Nefrem since the beginning of time. Within this system lay the
Garden
—a miraculous world so very much like the lost Eireki home—which had been chosen to serve a new purpose. A noble purpose. On that planet, balance would be restored and the Eireki would rise anew. From the ashes would evolve a better, stronger Eireki, capable of defeating the Nefrem once and for all.

Wounded, tired and limping, she looked down on the radiant green and blue planet, and asked forgiveness for the crime she was about to commit. Within her, the
Golden Codex
fulfilled its purpose: it adapted countless gene sequences to an eons-long program, imprinted them onto a biomechanical seed and spat it at the peaceful world below.

The seed struck hard, raising inky clouds across the globe. The destruction would bring about change and new growth, while the retroviruses it dispersed became the seeds of resurrection. It was done.

Now she could sleep and dream and wait for the children of the Eireki to wake her. She could sleep for sixty-five million years.

Sixty-five million years.

"Sixty-five million years."

"Marcus? He's talking. Thank God."

"You son of a bitch. I thought we lost you."

She opened her eyes and tried to focus. She was confused, not sure of who or what she was. Then he knew. He knew precisely what was going on. He took a deep breath as the image came into focus, and he looked at the Eireki dressed in strange suits and helmets all around him.

St. Martin was hovering above him, giving him a thorough and frantic examination. "He's coming around. I want you to focus on me. That's good. Tell me your name."

There was a pressure on the side of his head. He reached up and found a device attached to his temple, hard and smooth but warm. It belonged there.

St. Martin's eyes were full of concern. "Can you tell me who you are?"

After a moment, he smiled and said, "My name's Marcus Donovan, and I am Eireki."

"He's delirious. St. Martin to Shackleton, prep the med bay for surgery. Donovan's been compromised by some kind of alien parasite. We're en route now."

"Roger that, Doctor. Preparation under way."

Marcus was still sitting in the molded white seat, and he wasn't sure how long he'd been out. His head was swimming like he'd just woken out of a fevered dream. Intense images and feelings flashed behind his eyes, but they were slowing down and coming less frequently. Meanwhile, St. Martin was not-so-gently trying to pull him to his feet.

"Nonsense. Shackleton, belay that order," he said, and pushed her away. "I'm fine."

"Damn you, Marcus... it's in your god damned brain!"

That should have bothered him more, and he knew it. Hell, he could hardly stand getting a flu shot, yet here he was with an alien machine plugged directly into his grey matter and it was all okay. The ship assured him it was perfectly safe and necessary.

"It's okay, Julie. It's an interface, nothing more. It allows me to communicate with the ship." He pulled up memories that weren't his own, recollections of when the device was first designed and tested. The feeling was indescribably strange. "The interface was originally manufactured... errr,
grown
I guess, as an emergency fall back in case something interfered with telepathy. Our species has deficient receptor organs, so I needed it to make contact."

"The ship told you this?" Rao asked.

"More or less." The process of remembering felt completely intuitive, yet words were failing him. It was like trying to describe color to the blind. "I don't hear voices or anything. I get ideas and feelings from her, and memories. Damn, the memories are something else."

Part of the device wriggled inside his head and he convulsed. The spasm was slight, like a nervous tick, but it was nonetheless unpleasant.

"Jesus," Faulkland said. "You're a mess, man."

St. Martin pulled an injector out of her pack. "If you won't come willingly, I'll take you by force. God only knows what that thing's doing to you, Marc." Two crewmen flanked her as she spoke.

"I wouldn't do that," Marcus said, and the ship agreed. A pair of ropey tendrils emerged from the ceiling and lowered towards the crewmen. He told the ship that wouldn't be necessary, and the tendrils paused, then slowly backed away. "Believe me when I say this... she'll be very,
very
displeased if I'm sedated against my will, and we don't want to make her angry. Just trust me a little, Juliette." He gave her a reaffirming nod. "Trust me."

St. Martin's brow furrowed and her jaw tightened as she considered Marcus' plea. She finally waved the crewmen away and they stood down. "Fine. But I don't like it," she said.

"Of course not. You're a good doctor. I need you to keep an eye on this thing, alright? Check for signs of rejection. An adverse reaction could kill me." He could feel that the ship liked St. Martin, and he smirked. "So do I," he accidentally said aloud.

Faulkland leaned over the circular railing with an unusually large smile on his face. He was loving every minute of this. "So, we should all get used to you being double-extra crazy?"

"God, I hope not." As if on cue, the device's tendrils moved inside his skull again and he jerked. "Just need a little time to acclimate. How long was I out, anyway?"

St. Martin had her medical probe drawn and was scanning the side of his head. "About thirty seconds from when it struck to when you started talking. You were in REM sleep."

Marcus said, "Felt like days."

The ship informed him that the battle he experienced took several days to complete. "I guess that makes sense," he replied, then shook his head as he realized he was speaking aloud again.

St. Martin finished her examination with a sigh, and finally stepped back. "Everything seems alright. There's a little bit of inflammation around the wounds, but nothing serious. Less than I'd expect. Let me know immediately if it starts to itch or burn."

"Will do," Marcus said with a sigh, glad to have a little space to breathe again. It was bad enough having someone new in his head; it was much worse also being poked and prodded like a lab rat.

His gaze swept the rest of the room, and the place was now familiar, all except for the thirty-some-odd Eireki milling around in pressure suits. That was a little out of the ordinary. He called up memories of the room, and the ship responded with its different possible configurations. The variety was staggering. He selected one with an abundance of molded seats, and the room shifted to accommodate.

"Care to have a seat?" he asked.

The crew responded with understandable caution. The ship informed him that many were terrified and vividly imagining arms pinning them down and jamming bugs into their heads. He made a mental note about establishing some sort of privacy policy.

"At ease, folks. She's not gonna bite. She won't do anything to you against your will, and she's frankly having enough trouble dealing with one of these things right now," he said while tapping the strange device. "I called up the chairs because it's awkward being the only one sitting. I feel like a movie villain."

No one sat down. Marcus stood instead and allowed all the chairs to melt back into the floor.

Rao started at him, and looked to be a thousand leagues deep in thought. If he weren't wearing a helmet, he'd undoubtedly be stroking his week-old beard.

"Question, Jay?"

"Too many to count. How about... what the heck happened when you touched the generator?"

"She was asleep and had been for a very long time. When I touched the hollow-drive, it jumped to max output and woke her up. She flew into a panic, like waking up from a nightmare with your heart pounding."

"Hollow-drive?" Rao asked, and Marcus shrugged.

"If she was asleep," St. Martin asked, "how do the doors and tubes work?"

"Reflex. It's by design. If she's incapacitated, her crew would still be able to navigate the ship and escape."

"Alright," Rao said, "and she brought us here to latch that thing to your head?"

"Initially, she wanted a good look at the invaders, to determine if we were hostile. Once she realized who we are, she decided to make contact through the device."

"
Who we are?
What's that supposed to mean?" Faulkland asked.

Marcus took a moment to collect his scattered thoughts, and put them in order. Bits and pieces of history were streaming into him, but whole massive swaths were mysteriously missing. The ship was forgetful, and he hoped it was just that she was still waking up, but she offered no explanation.

"Right. There's a really long answer to that question, but the short version is... um...
we're aliens.
"

Confused faces hinted he'd need to come up with a slightly longer answer.

"I'll give you the storybook version. Once upon a time, there was a civilization that had stretched itself across the entire galaxy. They called themselves Eireki, and they were peaceful creatures who communicated with each other using telepathy. Direct, mind-to-mind contact. They're technology was incredibly sophisticated, able to manufacture intelligent living machines like this ship."

There was a step in that sequence which Marcus couldn't piece together, something missing and essential, and every attempt to get hold of it left him empty handed.

He went on. "For the longest time, they believed they were alone in the universe. They found other planets with strange and wonderful life, but none of it was intelligent. Not yet at least, so the Eireki became stewards, fostering life wherever they found it in hopes of one day meeting creatures like themselves. That was until the Nefrem arrived... the enemy."