Stars Rain Down (28 page)

He was speechless. She knew him a little too well.

Lisa Albright left another gentle kiss on his lips, then turned and walked away. "I'll see you in the morning, hero."

Jack vaguely recalled that he had to make some kind of decision, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember what it was.

"...and that was the third time I got crabs. I haven't returned to Maui since, and chances for a future visit look bleak... for obvious reasons."

Nils Jansen took a moment to scratch his thick beard. His razor still worked just fine, but he'd lost the will to shave three months before, around the time he and the other two men aboard Copernicus Observatory were supposed to run out of supplies and starve to death.

They didn't starve partly because of intelligent rationing, and partly because they ate everything even remotely edible... including their shaving cream.

Besides, he thought the shaggy beard was appropriate to the predicament.

He clicked the mouth piece on again. "That blackened mess currently on screen is Korea as seen at night from a great altitude. Our viewers at home might have noticed it basically looks like a... well, a shapeless blob of land. Most peninsulas in fact look similar from great altitudes at night, and one could easily mistake Korea for Italy, Florida or the Yucatan. This blob is however notable, because... because my software says it's Korea. Now, I've never been there myself, but I hear it's just peachy. Or was, at some point in the not terribly distant past."

Marco was on the other side of the command center bouncing a tennis ball against the window over and over again, and Hopkins had curled up in a corner to read. They'd all lost a lot of weight, but Hopkins still eerily resembled a pilot whale. He looked suspiciously like dinner, actually.

With some effort, Jansen shook that idea out of his head.

"I thought the third time you got crabs was in Maine," Marco said.

"No. I caught
lobster
off the coast of Maine. Idiot."

"Oh. You understand my mistake."

Jansen took a sip of water out of his bottle. The filtration system was beginning to fail, and the water's flavor was becoming difficult to ignore. Musky. He chose not to think about what it tasted like.

Marco missed his ball on the rebound, and went chasing after it. "Ever been to Cape Cod, Nils?"

"No, but I've had vodka and cranberry juice."

"I always wanted to go there. Just once," Marco said. "It was a dream of mine. I figure sailing around New England is like
the best
thing in the world."

Jansen watched the darkened Earth fly by beneath them. They'd passed Japan already and were now over the Pacific Ocean. "I've done some sailing. It's not all that," he said.

"I'm not talking about wind surfing at an island resort with a bunch of drunk hookers. I mean real sailing. On a sloop. Racing in a fancy regatta with the wind in my hair, a white sweater tied around my neck and a glass of red wine in my hand."

"Wow," Jansen said. "Just wow. Something really weird must of happened to you as a child."

Marco looked mildly embarrassed. "Is it that strange?"

"Uh, yeah."

Jansen clicked the mouth piece. "Which brings us to tonight's question... what makes a man dream of sailing the coast of New England? Joining us here in the Radio Free Copernicus studio is closet sailor, Marco Esquivel. Marco, are the rumors true? Do you think about the Massachusetts shore while you masturbate?"

"Screw off, Nils."

"Riveting show," Hopkins said.

"How about you, Hop? Any secret fantasies about cutting a jib?"

"Nope. Can't stand the ocean. I dream about cutting your throat sometimes, though."

"Zing!"

Right as Jansen started to laugh, there was a strange noise. It was a loud thunk, as if something had collided with the station. It sounded like someone docking.

"What the hell was that?"

"Not sure, but it can't be good." Jansen pulled out a metal rod that he'd carefully sharpened to a fine point. He'd planned to kill Hopkins with it when the last of their rations ran out. He'd slide it between the vertebrae at the base of the whale-man's neck, killing him instantly. Jansen didn't like Hopkins much, but he at least owed him a quick death.

He wasn't surprised to see Marco and Hopkins with shivs of their own.

"Should we take cover," Hopkins asked in a stage whisper.

"No. Full frontal assault," Marco said. "You go out ahead, and we'll be right behind you."

"It never frigging ends with you two," Hopkins said, exasperated.

Jansen ducked behind his console. "Don't talk like that, my cetacean friend. Everything ends. Fact, I bet we're all gonna die real soon."

There were a couple of loud pops, followed by a crackling noise. The acrid stench of ozone filled the air.

"Whatever happens," Jansen said, "I want you sons of bitches to know I hate you both."

"Same."

"Ditto."

There was a whine of metal tearing, followed by a gong-like-clang and then silence. Hopkins and Marco both found their own hiding spots evenly spaced around the room.

Then they heard the approach. Something moved through the inside of the station, pawing at the guide rails and scraping along the walls. All three men had been aboard Copernicus so long that each noise gave them new information, told them what bulkhead the invaders were passing and how quickly they were progressing.

The monsters split up at the habitation hub, while one headed toward the command center alone. A mistake. The alien bastard was going to be easy prey.

Jansen's head suddenly filled with twisted fantasies. He imagined killing the invasion party one by one, stalking them like animals in the wild before sinking his blade into their skulls. Then he'd commandeer the enemy ship and return to Earth, where the surviving humans would give him a hero's welcome. With the captured alien technology, the resistance could craft new weapons and finally turn the tides of war back on their oppressors. Months or maybe years later, they'd drive the enemy from their planet once and for all, and Nils Jansen would be immortalized with a marble statue the size of a skyscraper, which people would revere and worship for all time.

A bright light emerged from the shaft, and Jansen blasted back into the present. The lamp was so bright that he couldn't make out the shape of it. How many arms did it have? Did its jaw gape open like a snake? Was it covered in breasts?

The creature floated out into the middle of the command center and Jansen's moment arrived. He wheeled into position, put his feet against the wall and pushed off, screaming, "Die, you alien bastard!"

Shiv in hand, he hurtled through the air, slobbering with fury as he went. The thing's lamp turned toward him and shined him in the eyes, but he would not be deterred. He neared his target and thrust his weapon forward, only to stab at open air.

The creature had evaded his strike like a Spanish matador taunting a bull, but the tactic only stoked Jansen's anger. He twisted around and prepared to launch himself off the next wall, then finally got a good look at his opponent.

It was a man in a standard white GAF pressure suit. The light came from his helmet lamp, and he was waving his arms around spastically.

"What in tarnation?" Jansen asked, and briefly wondered what or where
tarnation
was.

The suited man unlatched his helmet and pulled it off, revealing a wonderfully familiar face.

"Mason?"

Mason Shen had a silly grin, but it quickly faded to a look of total disgust. "Oh shit, it stinks in here."

"Mason, is that you? I'm hallucinating. I'm just imagining you, right?"

"Nope. You're not imagining me... but I wish you were. Jesus almighty is it foul."

"Sorry," Marco said. "Our subscription to
Good Housekeeping
ran out a couple weeks ago."

"I don't understand," Jansen said, "how are you here? Did Donovan bring the Shackleton back?"

"That bucket's long gone, buddy. We're here testing out Faulkland's new ship,
Phoenix.
Listen, it's a long story, and I'd like to do as little breathing in here as possible. Why don't we get out of this stink pit, hop back in the skiff and get you guys a shave and a shower?"

"That sounds nice," Marco said.

Hopkins was already floating dreamily toward the shaft.

Jansen went back to his console and clicked on the mouth piece one last time. "Due to unexpected developments, it appears that Radio Free Copernicus will be going off the air. I'd just like to thank our long time listeners. To all of our supporters out there in radio land, thanks for taking this long strange journey with us... and keep on truckin'."

"Are you done?" Mason asked.

"Completely. Let's blow this popsicle stand."

Jack knew Uganda and Kenya well enough, and he thought he was pretty well acquainted with the Congo rainforest too, but things change.

The Earth was one of those things now. The dense jungle had been supplanted by a new environment. The invaders hadn't just colonized; they were transforming the Earth into a different world altogether, complete with an entirely alien ecology.

Near the invasive city, green jungle gave way to a strange twisting growth of orange and purple. The branches of alien trees joined together and intertwined in a latticework, making it impossible to gauge where one tree ended and the next began. They formed distinct levels suspended above the ground which Jack and his team traveled with ease.

The wildlife was overtaken as well. Back on the shores of Lake Edward, the team saw plenty of native animals including hippos, elephants, crocodiles and even a few okapi; but as they ventured deep into the alien world, they found creatures like nothing from Earth.

Strange multi-winged beasts with tendrils around their mouths flew erratically overhead, while furry little things with numerous eyes and arms ending in hooks swung from branch to branch. The ground below was slowly scavenged by a sedate animal with leathery skin, which crawled around on five human-like arms, and devoured bugs it found with a long snout. It occasionally let out a call that sounded just like a poorly tuned bassoon.

The only indigenous life daring enough to enter the strange world were Jack's team and the occasional band of chimpanzees, both of whom strictly avoided the forest floor and anything not of their own world. The passing chimps would sometimes stop to watch Jack and his crew move from cover to cover, before taking off toward some other destination.

A few kilometers into the obnoxiously colored forest, Jack finally found what he was looking for. The forest thinned and came to a halt, giving way to delicately arranged gardens and crop fields of yet more alien plants, and another half-kilometer beyond sat an impossibly large alien fortress in cerulean blue. The great disc-shaped city was twenty kilometers across, and squatted on a jumble of roots which dug down into the soil beneath it.

The disc's body was split open like a fruiting mushroom, revealing an network of gills, stalks and bulbs within. There was another kind of forest inside, one overflowing with activity as its denizens went about their daily business. All of this was hidden from the sun beneath an umbrella-shaped cap, whose inside glowed like an immense street lamp.

"That's a city?" Nikitin asked in awe.

Charlie nodded. "Is it really that different from Manhattan?"

"Yeah, it is," Nikitin said. "This looks like something I'd find growing in a sock."

Jack raised his binoculars and tried to take it all in, but there was just too much to absorb. Charlie was right in a way. The details were foreign, but the shape was the same. It was a living city, with its own congested traffic and bustling neighborhoods. Jack could only see the very edge of it, but he could tell there was a lot going on inside.

Charlie started snapping pictures through his visor while Jack brainstormed ways to get a closer look. They weren't going to learn anything useful from the park across the street. He wanted to get into the backyard, or maybe break into the basement if he could.

"I need some idea," Jack said. "How do we get in?"

"I dunno," Lisa replied. "Anyone remember to bring an armor division?"

Nikitin snapped his finger in mock disappointment. "Aw man... left it in my other pants."

"Yeah, yeah, yuck it up," Jack said dryly. He wondered why he was always stuck with such smart mouths.

Charlie checked his weapon as he said, "We just just do like the Romans."

"Nice, Charlie," Nikitin said. "Should we do like the four-armed Romans, or the six-armed ones that float?"

"Good point."

The team moved on when Charlie was done taking pictures, keeping to the thick bush at the edges of the alien civilization. They didn't move particularly fast, and the circle around the city was over sixty kilometers in circumference, so it quickly began to feel like they weren't getting anywhere.

As they went, the team took a good long look at the crops and the creatures tending them. Fields were laid out in rows, and filled with unfamiliar plants. Agriculture had never been Jack's strong suit and he thought most vegetables looked kind of alien to begin with, so the fields were at best unsurprising. Of more interest were the creatures tilling the them, which looked like short, squat versions of the walkers, but with large blades they dragged through the soil, and Jack imagined they were also vehicles driven by the skinny white pilots.

The team stopped after a klick, and something in the distance caught Charlie's eye. He flipped down his mask and dialed up his optics. "Hey, how about Romans in hooded robes?"

Jack brought his binoculars back up, and he could just barely make out a small group headed out from the city. There were eight of them walking in single-file, dressed in graphite hooded robes, like futuristic Franciscan monks. "Well, I'll be damned," he said.

The monks walked out to a cobblestone circle surrounded by meticulously arranged plants, stood at the edge and began to pray. At least, Jack assumed they were praying. They put their arms out and looked up toward the sun, and just stood that way for over twenty minutes.