Stars Rain Down (34 page)

Kai walked over to him, and Jack motioned for him to sit down. "It's a long story," Kai said.

"Take your time. I'm a patient man."

Kai pulled his mask off and shoved it in his jacket, then took a deep breath. "As you wish. It starts thirty-two of your years ago. My people, the Somari, had just come out of a century-long war, and for the first time we were united. It was the dawn of a new age of prosperity, fueled by the technological advances made during the war."

"What sort of advances?"

Kai smiled. "Genetic engineering. Biotechnology. The ability to manufacture new bodies from whole cloth, and transfer minds from one to the next."

"So you're..."

"Enhanced. A biotech construct. This is my fifth body, counting the one in which I was born."

"Alright... Now's the part of the story where something terrible happens."

"Yes," the alien said. "The Nefrem happened. Their invasion fleet appeared in orbit and laid siege to our planet. Just like that, we were embroiled in war again. We thought we could defeat them but their forces were too numerous... too powerful. It took them only thirteen days to conquer our world, and our Archon chose to destroy it rather than concede defeat. He would not allow them to devour us."

"Devour you?"

"That's the Nefrem way. I'll spare you the details."

"Thanks. So... how did you survive?"

"I was placed in a bottle and set adrift on the sea of stars."

"And you ended up where?"

"Other Sinits like me... infiltrators... they discovered which star systems the Nefrem were targeting, and the Archon's dying wish was that I be sent to warn them."

"And?"

"Five years later, my capsule arrived in the Oikeya system. The code be praised, Jack... You simply can't imagine all the many strange wonders of that system. It was so rich and full of life. Three whole living worlds! Three, each with a completely unique ecosystem and collection of intelligent species. And that was only the beginning. Out among the asteroids were membranous sacks full of water. Islands in space, each of them alive and intelligent, and full of yet more creatures. Life which existed free of the shackles of gravity. And all of it brought together, interconnected by living space ships that fly as naturally as a fish swims through water."

"Sounds too good to be true."

"I know," Kai replied. "I thought the same thing every moment I was among them. I was sure I had died and gone to... Heaven? The Oikeyans had no concept of war or hatred. No struggle or strife. They lived in peaceful harmony with one another... and they were all so very naive." He was quiet for a long pause. "When I told them the destroyers were coming, they laughed, Jack. They actually laughed."

"What'd you do?" Jack asked.

"Everything I could. I preached to whoever would listen, and trained whoever would learn. I traveled the system for eight years trying to build some kind of defense, until the Nefrem advance fleet finally arrived. The Oikeyans greeted them with open arms and paid dearly for the mistake. Millions died before my forces were able to turn the scout fleet away."

"But they came back?"

"Of course. The destroyers returned in numbers that made a mockery of their assault on my homeworld, and they brought their living planet with them. The war was over before it ever began."

"How many died?"

"Forty billion," the alien said sharply. "Slaughtered, eaten, and churned out into more Nefrem. The sixty million refugees here on Earth... they're all that remains."

"But why come here, Kai? Why like this? You could've asked us for help."

Kai's attention snapped to him, and he looked Jack dead in the eyes. "Because
you are Nefrem,
" he said.

"We look like them?"

"No, Jack. You are them, and there can be no mistake. You're genetically identical, and we only learned of this world from their records. The location was cleverly hidden... heavily encrypted and obscured behind falsified information, and I believed that was to prevent enemies from discovering their homeworld."

"So you brought the Oikeyans here to strike back."

"Yes. We came prepared to wage the final battle. To tear out the weed at its root. The plan was to take the Nefrem by surprise and wipe out their civilization before they could mount a counter-offensive, and in that, we were fairly successful."

"Except we're not the Nefrem," Jack said while shaking his head. "This doesn't make any sense. We've always been here on Earth. We evolved here, and until you arrived, we were pretty sure there wasn't life out there at all. I mean... we've only just taken our first baby steps out onto other planets, for Christ's sake."

"I know that now. In fact, your people survived precisely because you're not the Nefrem. They live in hives the size of your largest cities, without villages or farmland. If you lived like them, you would have been exterminated."

Jack shook his head. "I'm so glad this has been a learning experience for you, Kai. Really. I mean that."

"Sarcasm aside, the truth is that I can't turn back time, and I can't undo what I've done... but we still have a choice about who to become in the wake of this."

"Yeah," Jack said. "I know the guy who said that."

"I do too, and he's an amazing creature. After everything that's been done to him... everything he's seen and been through, he still refuses to kill innocents. He could have destroyed the entire city in a flash of light, but he chose not to. I subjected him to more pain than any living thing could be expected to endure, and yet he spared my life."

"He must be a damned idiot."

"Not at all. You're a better man than even you realize, Jack Hernandez, and there's something noble inside of you that I don't understand. Something luminous that I couldn't snuff out no matter how hard I tried."

The alien was silent for a long time, then said, "I will never cultivate a soul like yours, but I can become a weapon of your will, and perhaps atone for some of my mistakes."

"And if I prefer you dead?" Jack asked.

"Then I'll die. I deserve no less... but I don't think you'll make that choice. You know that I can do more good alive than dead."

"We'll see," Jack said. "No offense, but this all seems a little too convenient. You'll excuse me if I don't lead you straight back to the resistance."

"I understand your apprehension, but I've no reason to deceive you. Your people have gotten sloppy, and your primary installations have already been located and dealt with. All that remains are the fortified shelters... Arks, I believe you call them. The Oikeyans are mounting a final offensive right now, and they will finish the fight."

They both sat there and listened to the falling rain, until a motion in the distance caught Jack's eye.

He struggled to focus. Months of captivity had left his vision worse than it once was, and with some effort, he made out a rhino and two jackrabbits moving down the hillside.

His first instinct was panic. "We've got company!" he shouted and scrambled up from the ground.

"Relax," Kai said. "They're friends."

"What?"

"There are objectors among the Oikeyans who still believe life is sacred above all else, and they want to end the war. When I informed them I was going to free you, these three volunteered to accompany us."

Every muscle in Jack's body was rigid and his heart was racing. Kai might have spent months torturing Jack, but at least he looked human. The exterminators were a different story. They still had a profound effect on him, and the sight alone sent adrenaline surging through his blood.

"Fuck me. Okay. I can handle this. Accompany us where exactly, Kai?"

The alien said, "It's up to you."

"Figures," Jack said. With that, he dropped back down and laid himself out in the ground cover. The rain fell harder every minute, and he was soon wet like a river.

"For the time being," he said, "can I just lie here? I just want to lie here in the rain for a while."

"If that's what you wish. Should I... go somewhere else?"

Jack thought about it for a second and then said, "No. I may not like you, but... I've already had my share of solitude."

"As you wish."

Fourteen months had passed since the invasion, and Jack had spent four of them in captivity. Four months without sunshine. One hundred and eighteen days locked in a box, tortured and left to stew in his own despair while the world outside shambled on without him.

Now he was free. His flyer sliced through the air at more than two hundred kilometers an hour, racing northward over the rich green jungle.

Jack and the strange vehicle were intimately connected, but at the same time separate in a way that baffled him. The feeling of sheer, unbridled speed reminded him of riding a motorcycle but taken to an unimaginable extreme, while the play between mount and master was more like riding a horse. Not that he'd ever ridden one, but he'd heard stories.

As they traveled, he was taken aback by how quickly Mother Nature had reclaimed her world. Jack'd always heard that the Earth abides, but the swiftness of it was almost disturbing. Ashen cities were already overgrown with fresh vegetation, and only the twisted metal spires hinted that anything else had ever been there. Human civilization had been erased and forgotten.

It left him feeling like civilization hadn't been an integral part of the world, but had rather existed in spite of it. Mankind had been bailing water from a leaky ship, and in the absence of his attention, the tides rose up and swept it all away.

Jack and his companions stopped every few hours so the flyer could rest and graze. It wasn't like the larger cuttlefish in this regard, which were self-sufficient and capable of space travel. This flyer's natural habitat was the city, and it was less than ideal outside; worse, its reliance on external energy made it basically useless after nightfall.

Travelling all throughout the first day, Jack and his odd companions reached the shores of the Red Sea and camped there overnight. Although Jack logically understood that the others could kill him at any time, the danger felt doubled once the sun went down, and it bothered him so much he hardly slept.

When morning came, they returned to the air and quickly crossed the sea, and Jack was once again in the Mid East. Another seven hours after that, they arrived at the former site of Al Saif on the shores of the Dead Sea, and Jack confirmed what Kai had told him. Nothing remained of the base but a trash heap, the enemy having overrun the resistance more than a month before.

After an exhaustive search, Jack found himself wandering the ruins, and he paced for a long time while imagining how the battle went down, piecing together what he could from the debris. The airstrip had been torn to shreds, and various parts of temporary buildings littered the ground, but he didn't see vehicle wreckage anywhere.

"Satisfied?" Kai asked.

"Not quite the right word, but yeah..."

He tried to reconcile what he remembered of the base's layout with the destruction all around him, and hoped to discover a hidden weapons cache (for peace of mind), but it was more difficult than he might have guessed. He found nothing.

Kai had a frustrated look on his face. He was restless, but he held his tongue.

"I bet you're wondering what we're doing here," Jack said.

"The question crossed my mind."

"Trying to figure out if you're telling the truth about... well, anything. Seems you are."

"The world is full of surprises, isn't it?"

Jack smiled in spite of himself. "Now, there's good and bad news in this slag pile. The good news is that the resistance saw the attack coming, and evacuated before you all got here."

"How can you tell?"

"Trucks, planes. This place was rotten with 'em, but there's no sign of any here. The only explanation is that they got out before the fireworks started."

"Where'd they get the information?"

"Ancient Chinese secret. I'll never tell."

"Strange idiom," Kai said with a shrug. "And the bad news?"

"Since they had time to pack up and leave, I'm betting they took most of their supplies. I was hoping to pick up a little extra firepower, but there's nothing but rubbish here."

Kai looked at him like he was absolutely mad. "Maybe I wasn't clear, Jack. There's a legion marching toward the Ark right now. Armor, siege weapons, and more than a million ground troops. We can't fight them on our own."

"I know," Jack said, "but I like to keep my options open. You can solve a lot of problems with a honking big pile of explosives."

Looking at the remains of Al Saif didn't exactly fill him with confidence. It looked like a hurricane had hit the base. An angry hurricane that was on fire, and full of lawnmower blades.

The rhino waved and shouted something at the other end of the ruins, his deep voice carrying a surprising distance over open ground. Kai cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted something back in a language Jack was beginning to recognize, if not understand.

"What'd he say?"

"He asked if you were done moping yet."

"And?"

"I told him you'd be done soon. Don't make a liar of me, Jack."

He wasn't sure whether to laugh or be angry at that. "We'll hit the road in a bit," he said. "Riddle me this though, Mr. Space Ninja... what am I supposed to do?"

"If I knew that, I'd have done it already. But don't worry... You're a resourceful guy. You'll think of something."

Jack shook his head. "You either have too much faith, or a really strange sense of humor."

The alien picked up a piece of ruined metal and spun it around in his hand, maybe trying to determine its original purpose. After a moment of fruitless head scratching, he cocked his arm back and threw it far into the distance.

It occurred to Jack that the hunk of metal must have weighed more than twenty kilos, yet Kai handled it like a baseball.

"They could have at least left me a bottle of hooch," Jack said after a while.

"Hooch?"

"Booze. Alcohol. Fermentation of fruit or grain, ingested to produce intoxication."