Stars Rain Down (40 page)

Then he changed course, veering into the wastes of China where the aliens built piles of the dead and left them to rot. He remembered the family he found in the cellar, and all the refugees who joined his pilgrimage to the west. He remembered his first glimpse of blue sky after months traveling through the dust, and the pain he felt when he learned his whole world had been smashed apart.

Finally, he remembered standing in the alien city, willing to kill his own rather than let the enemy's innocent children die.

Then he was back in that damn silent room. At least he knew why he was there, now.

"You've done to us what they did to you. Are you satisfied now?"

His voice didn't echo this time. It stopped dead.

"Are you listening to me?"

He closed his eyes and sought out the silence, and just like last time, the creature's ten-thousand eyes flooded into him. But this time, he was ready. The pain struck and he felt like white water rapids were trying to sweep him away, but he clung on and focused. Focused.

There.
He fought against the tide and shut out all the other eyes when he found the one he wanted. Out beyond the battle line, a hundred million human refugees streamed out of the Ark. They were running for their lives, and would never make it far enough in time. Neither would any of the soldiers still fighting on the line.

Jack imagined a white hot blast followed by a mushroom cloud, and hoped the image was clear enough.

The other turned from anger to panic. It couldn't understand why. It dug through Jack's head trying to find an answer, but he held it close and wouldn't let it out. He wanted to let the other sweat for a little while.

Then he spoke slowly, unsure of precisely how the other understood him. "Because this war will destroy us all. It will slowly bleed both sides dry until there's no one left to bury the dead."

The other listened.

"Unless we can find some kind of peace. Some way to work together. All I've done is make the threat more immediate, and now you have an opportunity to change the rules of the game. You can save millions of innocent lives from their own weapon, and maybe build a different tomorrow. We can build it together."

It wasn't sure.

"Neither am I, but the only other option is to do nothing and watch everyone die. I'm not convinced that's such a bad idea, but the choice is yours."

It wanted to know how.

Jack imagined the silver robed Sey Chen all throughout the city, gathered in crowds around their miniature stars. Then he brought to mind an image of their shiny defensive membranes.

Jack's mind was suddenly flooded with information from all over the Yuon Kwon, and he cried out. The other stopped, and Jack was back in the safe-room.

"Not all at once. I need you to help me."

All was quiet for a moment, and then the other tried again but with only a trickle instead of a flood, while Jack gritted his teeth and held on for dear life.

It wasn't enough. He couldn't keep his head above water. He was swept away against his best efforts, and the two became one.

Amira Saladin stopped firing as the humongous alien disc flew overhead. Its passing was followed by a pressure wave that knocked human and alien alike off their feet. At the same time, all of the shiny metallic bubbles disappeared from around her opponents, leaving them unshielded. Something was happening. Something important.

"What's going on?" she demanded over the command channel.

The comms were full of chatter and she couldn't tell if anyone answered. Then she noticed a group of words that kept repeating. "Nuke. Get down!"

She crawled toward the edge of the battlement and watched the disc go by, then saw the wave of panicked refugees flooding across the burnt landscape between the Ark and their line. More came out of the fortress every second in a stampede that was headed right for her.

Then she saw the most amazing and inexplicable thing she could ever imagine. Bolts of lightning crawled all over the Ark, and the metal hatches began to glow red. The alien disc stopped above it and thousands of metal tentacles reached down and stabbed into the hillside. They tore through the fortress, rooted around inside and came back with a dense chunk of overwrought machinery covered in billowing clouds of steam.

Lightning clung to the machine as if trying to drag it back into the hole.

Holding the reactor beneath it, the disc blasted up into the heavens and disappeared. A moment later, the sky was filled with a blinding flash as intense as the midday sun. Sal hadn't seen anything remotely like it since she was five years old, when the Sirius supernova filled the sky.

Seconds later, she realized how close to being annihilated they'd all come. And judging by the quiet along the line, she wasn't alone in suddenly feeling introspective.

***

Space. The upper edge of the atmosphere was so pristine and beautiful. So empty, perfect, and still.

Amiasha Aum-Samaraya had barely escaped the terrible explosion. The Sey Chen within had worked their magics and shielded him from most of the blast, but he was still badly wounded. His outer shell was cracked and smoking, and there was so much pain everywhere, outside and in, that he could think of nothing else.

He tumbled through the void. Aimless. Broken. He was so young, but maybe it was his time to die.

"Jack!" a distant voice called.

Gravity pulled him downward. He fell toward the alien planet, hot air rushing up and over him. So much terrible heat.

Death approached. He could just let himself break apart and burn up in reentry. Then his pain would be over. Perhaps he'd done enough to earn an honored place in the great beyond.

"You have to wake up!"

Whose voice was that? Amiasha scanned everywhere within himself, looking through each of his ten-thousand eyes for the source of that voice, until he finally came to the chamber. There was something strange going on inside.

Land-bound.
They did not belong. Oikeyan and Nefrem gathered in a circle around the cradle, with his Alarhya dead on the ground, and a Nefrem joined to him instead. Who was that Nefrem?

"Please wake up, Jack."

Flash. He was looking at his own body lying in that cradle. He was the city and the Nefrem at once. The tide rose up and swallowed him again.

After all of this, couldn't they just let him die? Let his suffering end.

The armor along his bottom was flaking away, exposing the soft inner flesh. He felt only the white searing heat, blotting out every other thought.

The pain brought silence. The silence was a gateway.

Jack surfaced again, twitching between the circular prison and the reality of Amiasha Aum-Samaraya plummeting through the Earth's atmosphere.

It would all be over soon.

"Jack!"

But it wasn't only Jack who'd die. Lisa, Charlie, and Nikitin would also. Ferash and Dojer, too. It wasn't just Amiasha who would die. Sey Chen in the thousands would perish.

He couldn't allow this.

Thrust. His tired and bleeding organs surged into action, and he pushed. He fought against the unrelenting pull of gravity. Still the ground approached. Still the searing heat increased.

He poured everything into the struggle, but it wasn't enough. He didn't have enough.

When no hope remained, only then did he hear the chorus of the Sey Chen. They sang quietly but with beautiful voices, and their strength grew with every passing moment. Their singing filled him with light and life. The five stars burned inside of him, brighter, stronger and hotter than ever before, and he suddenly found new power.

Thrust.

The ground approached, and Amiasha Aum-Samaraya braced for impact. He howled out as he crashed into the Earth, and the ground split beneath him. The world quivered at his touch.

He was down and it was complete.

***

"Are you okay, Jack?"

He couldn't tell. His head hurt like he'd been on an all whiskey diet for two straight weeks, and he felt displaced. Displaced?

He groaned.

"Can you open your eyes?"

He tried. Something had short-circuited in his brain. He knew what he wanted to do but couldn't find the switch.

The darkness was kind of a relief.

Then he found the switch and his eyes slowly creaked open. Everything was blurry. There was grease on the lens.

"Lisa?"

"Yup," she said.

His eyes began to focus, but the splitting headache continued unabated. "This seems familiar. I could really get used to seeing your face when I wake up."

She smiled.

He asked, "We don't have to run anywhere, do we?"

"Not this time, hero."

"Thank God," he said, and tried not to fall back asleep. At that, he failed.

Marcus Donovan and Vijay Rao walked down a wide street in blue-green that overflowed with activity. There was so much foot traffic that Marcus could hardly see a few meters in front of him, and he took that as another fine example of humanity's ability to cope in the most dire of circumstances. It impressed him and Legacy to no end.

Four months had passed since the
Battle of the Ark,
which had unexpectedly ended in total withdrawal. The strange events at the end left both sides equally vulnerable and confused, and retreat was the only option that made any sense. A tense cease-fire followed.

"Who could've expected this?" Marcus asked.

"I stopped making predictions about the future," Rao replied. "Was costing me too much money."

They pressed on through the crowd, and Marcus marveled at the multiple levels of the city up above, each built on its own web of catwalks. This was his first visit to the Oikeyan city called Amiasha, which had removed the Ark's self-destructing fusion reactor at the height of the battle and saved countless lives. Afterward, the ship came crashing back down to the ground a few kilometers away, then took root in order to heal itself.

There was some kind of mutiny aboard the ship, but the details remained a mystery, and the Oikeyan legion beat a hasty retreat back to their colonies in Africa.

Meanwhile, the Ark had been torn to shreds, and a hundred million human refugees were once again homeless. It didn't take them long to come and investigate the city-ship, like children poking a dead animal with a stick. But this animal was still alive. Just barely... but alive.

What they found was simply amazing. The only aliens left aboard the ship were the pacifist Sey Chen, who welcomed the refugees with open arms. The rest, as they say, was history.

Still, there were too many mysteries about that day for Marcus' liking, and clues were few and far between. Why was the Ark's self-destruct activated in the middle of the battle? How did the city-ship become aware of the impending explosion? He had no idea the answers to either, and had come down from orbit to find out.

As they walked down Amiasha's crowded streets, Marcus and Rao turned and cut through one of the many markets where people were busy selling all kinds of goods. When they reached the far end where the tents thinned out, they found the man they were looking for.

He wore a set of army fatigues that had obviously been mended a few too many times, and his skin was thoroughly pitted and scarred. It looked like someone had splashed molten lava on him. Still, he was all in one piece, which was better than many soldiers could say, and he'd even found work.

"Are you Sgt. Karpov?" Marcus asked.

"Commander Donovan?"

Marcus nodded, and Karpov snapped a salute. Marcus returned the gesture clumsily, sure he'd never quite get used to it.

"I wanted to ask some questions about the day of the battle, if that's alright," he said.

"Absolutely, sir."

"I understand you were working guard detail in the reactor section. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"So... tell me about the incident."

"It's all in my report, sir," the scarred soldier said.

"That's alright. I'd like to hear it in your own words."

And Karpov told his story. Unfortunately, it matched the debriefing reports to the last detail. Someone or something had breached the Ark at the height of the battle. Many described it as an invisible monster that ran faster than bullets. Karpov saw only a blinding light that rushed his position and melted a steel barricade with its touch.

It was just another of the hundred ghost stories that came out of that day.

When Karpov finished, Marcus thanked him and went on his way. He knew someone out there had the missing puzzle pieces, and he wouldn't rest until he found them.

The End

All beneath the heavens call my Tao great.
Because of its greatness, it seems strange,
But if it weren't strange, it would've faded long ago.

There are but three treasures I cherish and cling to:
The first is mercy, the second economy,
And the third is indifference to winning.
From mercy arises courage;
from economy, generosity;
From humility, the power to effect change.

These days, men belittle mercy, yet celebrate courage;
They forget economy while exercising generosity;
They cast aside humility and always strive to be first.
Thus do they court their downfall.

Through mercy, struggles can be surmounted,
And defenses made impenetrable.
This is how the universe preserves and protects.

Chris J. Randolph (hey, that's me!) is a writer, graphic designer, and killer robot originally constructed in the San Francisco Bay Area. When not talking about himself in the third person, he's otherwise writing about fictional people who pilot spaceships, fight dinosaurs, and seduce green women... and somewhat less often about green women who pilot dinosaurs, fight people, and seduce spaceships.

His other interests include linguistics, cooking, video games, and digital publishing advocacy. He's the proud recipient of several literary awards he made out of construction paper, and he currently resides outside of Sacramento in a secret military bunker hidden a half-mile beneath the Earth's surface.