Critical Path (The Critical Series Book2) (3 page)

The alien chattered an affirmation and shuffled over to the media screen. She took a data card from a pocket within her armor and placed it in the port of the screen. Turning to face the others, she added, “One pod found, we take, but others… too far. We travelled toward pods, but we met…” She struggled to find the words, her leather lips unable to form the correct shape for the sounds.

Khan filled in. “They met resistance.”

Gregor leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees; this was starting to sound very interesting indeed.

“Via her helmet cam, Venrick caught the… well, let’s just play it.” Khan and Venrick walked away and sat on a couch next to Denver and Layla’s. Everyone stared up at the screen, waiting for the video to play.

It switched on; the sound of gunfire and excited clicking burst from the hidden wall speakers. Gregor reflexively startled as a gun fired from behind him.

It took him a few split seconds to realize it was just the audio on the film. The images shook and it took a while to work out what he was looking at.

In a field wider than the camera’s angle, hundreds of croatoans wearing the familiar farm-issue armor ran panicked in all directions.

Bodies were falling to the ground by the dozens.

Two pods lay haphazardly in the center of the battle, and it appeared they were the prize for the winners.

To Gregor’s surprise, the opposition were also croatoans. But these ones were entirely different. And not just their dress, which appeared to be adapted human clothes.

Bizarrely, one, a particularly large commander of some type, led the charge while wearing a double-breasted suit. Different colored fabrics were sewn in the elbows, legs and knees in order for it to fit the alien physiology.

Mixed in with these strangely dressed aliens were a ragtag band of humans. Wild-eyed and wearing rags and tatty jeans, they mobbed the farm aliens and cut them down with a mix of crudely made melee weapons and alien rifles.

The sheer numbers of them overran the field.

Venrick must have panicked at that point because the film became wild as she turned and fled into the woods.

“Back up a few seconds,” Gregor said, having spotted something in the battlefield.

Khan did as requested.

“Freeze it.”

There on the screen, in the shadows of the fight, an alien pulled a human from a pod. Venrick zoomed in. It was…

“Charlie goddamned Jackson!”

CHAPTER THREE

Charlie tried to crouch and catch his breath. For the first time in years his limbs felt weak. Sweat coated his clothes and the breeze tickled at the hair on his neck. He squinted against the sun and reached down to grab some root.

The metal cable noose tightened around his neck. He scrambled backwards trying to maintain balance as a croatoan yanked him with the pole he was attached to like some errant dog. The alien dragged him through the sunbaked field of flourishing orange crops.

Charlie tried to reposition his hands underneath the restraint to protect his neck wound. He licked his lips and swallowed hard. “If you want to keep me alive, you’ve a funny way of showing it.”

The croatoan ignored his words and pulled again, crushing Charlie’s blistered fingers.

He couldn’t accept his final act would be screaming as they fed him into a meat-processing machine and turned into silver trays of slop. Not that… anything but that.

For the last five minutes, faint sounds drifted across the breeze. He glanced over his shoulder. The trail of croatoans headed into a massive basin. Half of the ten aliens had already disappeared down it.

The sweet odor of the root field quickly changed to a nostril-invading stench. A mixture of cooking meat and dung wafted up from the basin.

Distant noises became clearer: the repeated clank of metal being struck, a dog barking, a rapid rhythmic sound of sawing wood. And then raised human voices, one laughing. Nothing like any farm he’d previously stalked and attacked.

The croatoan slowed as the ground changed from harvested land to a dirt road on a steep incline. Another alien stalked close with its strange bouncing gait and stopped to have a staccato conversation with Charlie’s captor.

Both of their uniforms were old and tatty. The body armor was faded and stained, their visors lacking their usual trademark sheen.

Charlie reached out and gripped the pole, twisting himself around to try to get a better view of his intended destination.

He fully expected a meat-processing warehouse. But the sight surprised him.

Smoke curled into the sky from at least fifty different places from a small town within the basin at least forty meters deep and a couple of kilometers wide.

Croatoans trudged down the dirt road in procession. It cut to the bottom of the basin in a series of shallow switchbacks and ran through the center of the settlement.

Either side of it, a mixture of two hundred or so small buildings with wooden and canvas roofs formed a cluttered surrounding, some with animal pens attached. A scattering of people moved between the individual places.

In the center, a larger building, perched high on a piece of raised ground, glinted in the sun. Charlie shielded his eyes and gasped. Constructed out of debris stone, it reached three stories high and featured a number of glistening metal turrets, completed by solid-looking wooden doors protecting its arched entrance.

Around the perimeter of the basin, a series of five giant steps were cut into the side. Like a stadium for giants. On the left-hand side, twenty or so buildings with more of a modern look nestled on each level, constructed with a mixture of materials.

Some looked like mini warehouses, others like log cabins or adapted trailers. Nothing seemed quite right with each one. The closest mini warehouse had a brick constructed dwarf wall running around the bottom; a cabin had silver window shutters. Several had washing lines out front. The clothing on them flapped in the breeze.

On the steps running around the right-hand side, root spread across the bottom three levels as far as the eye could see. Wheat and barley gently rippled on the upper sections.

A gaping sinkhole lay between the main settlement area and the basin’s left edge. Bigger than any Charlie had previously seen, a dull silver cone protruded out of the left-hand side. He recognized it as one of the initial invasion vessels.

Beyond the chasm, a high stone wall surrounded an area the size of a football field. Visually sweeping the landscape again, he attempted to assimilate the strange configuration. No frame of reference for the mash-up came to mind.

Whatever it was, it had been for some time.

A bearded man dressed in a filthy white apron walked around the side of the nearest building. After throwing the contents of a bucket into a pigpen, he turned and gazed upwards. Charlie raised his hand. The man shook his head, wiped his hands on his apron-front, and returned inside.

The croatoan tugged at the control pole, pulling Charlie to the ground. His heels slipped against the dusty surface as he tried to gain traction.

The alien increased its speed of descent. Charlie’s legs no longer had the strength to maintain a crab-like walk. He grabbed the pole with both hands, lifting his back off the ground, and scraped to the bottom of the incline on the balls of his feet.

A golden retriever bounded up, tail wagging. It panted in Charlie’s face and walked alongside. The croatoan loudly clicked, waving its dusty black glove at the dog until it scampered away. The alien hauled Charlie to his feet and pushed him forward, jabbing the pole into the back of his neck, encouraging him to walk along the two-hundred-yard road through the settlement and toward the main building.

Charlie shuffled forward, stumbling every time he received a thrust from behind. He glanced into the first building on the right. Different cuts of meat hung from hooks on the ceiling. Behind a wooden table, spattered in blood, the man in the filthy apron glared back at him before slamming a cleaver into a pig’s severed leg.

His guts rumbled. Since these people—and aliens—took him out of stasis from within the pod, he’d barely had anything to eat. Days passed and he grew weaker. The sight of those meats taunted him as he thought he could smell barbecued ribs and sausages.

The next place was little more than a glorified tent. Faded red canvas stretched over a circular wooden frame. Inside, a young woman in a basic blue dress worked a loom. A small boy with a dirty face fed her threads.

They both stopped work as Charlie passed. The boy said something, and the woman put her arm around him and tucked his head against her chest. She turned away. Charlie’s head snapped forward after yet another prod from the pole.

Two men sat under a red plastic awning on stools outside a garden shed, drinking from porcelain mugs. Both wore grimy blue jeans, brown woolen shirts and sturdy black boots. One looked at Charlie while casually chatting. He seemed to be acting as if this was an everyday occurrence.

“What the hell is this place?” Charlie said, his sore throat making his words scratchy and barely audible.

The man picked up a small stone and threw at it Charlie. He winced and twisted his head after the stone bounced off his ear. Both men cackled.

“What the hell?” Charlie said, coming to a stop and glaring at the two old geezers. This brought another push from the alien. Charlie thought about trying to twist out of the noose and ramming the pole down the bastard’s throat, but he was just far too weak. Grudgingly, he carried on moving forward.

Loud clanking came from a large open-fronted shack constructed of thick wooden trunks with a pitched slate roof. When Charlie drew level, two croatoans were busily working inside. Sparks fizzed from pieces of glowing metal as the aliens repeatedly hammered them into shape. Neither wore a helmet or uniform. Both dressed in cream-colored, crumpled linen shirts and trousers. Two tubes ran from their backpacks into each nostril of their disgusting tortoiselike heads.

Humans and croatoans working together like this… all this infrastructure. There was no way this had come about since the mother ship came down a month ago. The established settlement had a much older feel. Charlie knew he’d been taken north, but had no idea of his location.

A large lake, he thought. Given the basin and size of this place, it had to have been one of the many lakes that drained during the uprising. This could put him anywhere from north New York, Chicago or even into Canada, Ottawa perhaps.

One of the aliens raised a hammer in acknowledgement to the croatoan who pushed Charlie along before returning to his work. It interested Charlie to see how they had adapted their breathing apparatus. No more bulky visors and backpacks, the ones these wore were smaller and less prohibitive in their movement.

Root vapor still scented the air, though, so that hadn’t changed—they still relied on it in gaseous form.

Ahead, the main building doors started to slowly open with a low creak.

During his previous career, Charlie often dreamed about traveling back in time to observe a functioning medieval town, as a silent witness. But not like this, not in the future.

He thought about Denver and hoped his son believed him dead. Killed in the explosion that downed the mother ship. If Denver knew he was alive, he’d come, all guns blazing, and run into Charlie’s second worst fear after terraforming—integration.

***

Two croatoan guards aimed their rifles at Charlie as he was pushed into a large courtyard. He glanced up. Twenty aliens patrolled the ramparts, weapons pointing out. All of them had tubes up their nostrils, just like the blacksmiths. About half dressed in the standard uniform. One wore a hide jacket with body armor stitched in similar places.

The noose loosened around Charlie’s neck and slipped over his head. A hand firmly grasped his shoulder and shoved him across a cobbled surface toward a large pair of wooden doors.

Charlie rubbed his neck and considered his options. Running or fighting would lead to a swift gunning down. But he wondered why he remained alive.

The croatoans were pragmatic, but they must have known he had a hand in the destruction of both the mother ship and the terraforming ship. His last memory before being taken on a long death-march north was diving into a chamber with Augustus and hurtling to Earth.

Perhaps Augustus didn’t survive the landing… That would mean no one would know who Charlie was or what he did. He decided to play stupid during any interrogation.

If they wanted him dead, he’d have been shitted out by an alien a week ago.

A chill ran down his spine after leaving the warmth of the sun into a gloomy stone building. The alien hustled him along a narrow torchlit corridor into a square room illuminated by chunky candles attached to the wall. Charlie dropped to one knee after being kicked in the back of his leg.

He knelt in front of a raised platform. A polished wooden Glastonbury chair sat in the middle, with a purple cushion on the seat.

A young woman with flowing brown hair breezed in from a side entrance. She lifted her elaborate green dress before sitting on the chair. A brute of a croatoan followed and stood behind her. Stocky, mean looking, it had one of their large, angular rifles slung over its shoulder and a sickle in its left clawed hand.

She tilted her head to one side and sat forward, staring at Charlie. “He’s an old one.”

The stocky croatoan clicked.

“What’s your name?”

Charlie detected a mix of French and perhaps Turkish in her accent. He replied, “Joe Nobody. And you are?”

“My name is Aimee Rivery. Welcome to Unity, this is my town.” She paused for a moment and looked him up and down. “I’m going to give you a choice, old man. Your fate rests on your own decision. Do you understand?”

Charlie frowned. “A choice of what?”

She whispered something to the alien, who left the room. Returning her focus back on Charlie, she said, “We need to increase our crop production, due to our current expansion rate. You can have a place in my town if you’re prepared to work hard. You’ll be fed, have a roof over your head, and no trouble will come your way. What do you say?”