Stars Rain Down (15 page)

There was something wrong or missing there, too. He couldn't pin-point what it was, but it just didn't feel right. He was mis-remembering things.

"The Nefrem came from outside the galaxy in a living planet that was both their ship and breeding ground, and they were twisted demons who devoured life. They absorbed new gene-sequences, keeping whatever was valuable and discarding the rest, while recycling the flesh itself into their own perverted idea of order.

"As you might guessed, war erupted between the Eireki and Nefrem. It was savage and bloody, and stretched on for millennia. Both sides grew stronger, angrier and more effective through the conflict, and by its end, they were shattering whole planets in their quest to exterminate one another.

"The war finally came to a head with a single cataclysmic battle which involved the entirety of both races and their combined trillions of warships. The fighting was fierce and laid waste to the system where it was fought. When the smoke cleared, the only survivors were this ship and the Nefrem's living planet. Nemesis.

"The remaining Eireki knew that approaching the living planet meant death, since it produced a... like, a psychic signal that destroyed Eireki minds. They had no choice, though, so they charged the living planet and pushed it backward into a gas giant. Then the ship fired until the gas giant erupted into an artificial star."

"And the demons were destroyed?" Faulkland asked.

"No. This is probably the most incredible part... it was only a prison. The Nefrem technology was capable of channeling and redirecting the star's energy back outward, creating a protective bubble. I don't really understand it, but she's confident they survived, trapped and dormant all this time, and will survive the star's eventual collapse as well.

"Which brings the story back to us... The Eireki knew the Nefrem would eventually break free and begin their conquest all over again, so as their dying command, they sent the ship on a final mission. They'd found a planet uncannily like their own homeworld, which they kept secret from the Nefrem. They called it the Garden.

"It had abundant life of its own, and the Eireki thought it a strong candidate to eventually produce its own intelligent life, but they couldn't take any chances with the future. They sent the ship to break their most sacred law and seed the planet with their own genetic material."

"And you're telling us that this
Garden
is Earth," St. Martin said.

"And we're the Eireki reborn."

She frowned. "Then why aren't we telepathic?"

"So we could fight the living planet," Marcus said. "Telepathy was a huge boon to the Eireki and their development, but it also became their weakness, unable to even approach the enemy because of it. The ship claims there've been unexpected side effects, though. They never had culture like ours, for instance."

"Wait," Professor Caldwell said. He'd been listening intently the whole time, but the story was just beginning to click for him. "When you came around, you said
sixty-five million years.
Are you telling me this ship caused the K-T Extinction Event? She killed the dinosaurs?"

"Spot on. She's not proud of it, but there was no choice in the matter. It was done with a high-velocity orbital weapon that choked our atmosphere, and infected whatever survived with engineered retroviruses. The rest is history."

"And the ship?" Faulkland asked.

"Came here, wrapped herself in a cocoon and slept away the eons, waiting for us to reclaim her."

"Figures," St. Martin said. "I've never been a fan of exogenesis theories... but at least you didn't tell me alien astronauts built the sphynx."

Marcus laughed. "You're all taking this surprisingly well."

Faulkland slapped him on the back. "Pal, we're inside a living spaceship that can read our minds. You could tell me this thing's a marshmallow floating inside a giant mug of hot chocolate, and I wouldn't bat an eye."

"It's a little disappointing," Caldwell said. "I mean, it's all fantastic beyond belief. Don't get me wrong. But my adult life has been spent piecing together theories about ancient peoples. And all the answers here have been laid out on a silver platter."

"I dunno," Rao said, "it's a bit like a time capsule. A message in a bottle from the ancient past. That's pretty exciting in its own right. Besides, we still have plenty to learn about... and just think of where she can take us, of what cultures we've yet to meet." Rao's eyes were full of stars.

"I suppose you've got a point," Caldwell said, but he didn't sound totally convinced.

Faulkland dramatically coughed into his hand. "Excuse me, but am I the only one wondering about the big bad space demons? And what the hell is this room, anyway?"

"This room," Marcus said, "is the bridge."

The walls faded from white to black as he spoke, and then lit up with the stars and asteroids all around them. The shiny metallic Shackleton was visible, floating a safe distance away. The image all around was crystal clear and perfect, just like being out in space except without a bulky helmet to get in the way.

Everyone was taken aback, and several stumbled and fell over.

"Hot damn," Faulkland said. "That's
quite
a view."

Rao climbed back up to his feet shakily. "You've got to warn people before you do these things, Marc."

"Sorry," Marcus said with a smirk. "As for the
demons,
the ship's still updating her star charts, trying to determine just how long she's been out. If everything went according to plan, though, we should have plenty of time to gather a fleet and give them a proper welcome."

A memory suddenly surged through Marcus' mind, and he assumed it was the ship's doing. The recollection was electric, almost like being back there again. In it, he and his family were standing on the porch, taking turns looking through the rusty old telescope his uncle had given him. There was a fantastic light show. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, had exploded into a multicolored eye-shaped burst as bright as the full moon. The next day, they could still see it in broad daylight, and it continued that way for two years.

The memory faded and Marcus stumbled to the side. "Oh shit," he said, "estimates were off. We were slow."

"And the demons are free," Faulkland guessed.

Marcus said, "Sirius B. That was what, twenty-five years ago?"

"A little more," Rao said, "plus eight point six light-years. Thirty-four years, all told."

The words struck him, and the ship started to assimilate the new information. They were behind schedule, that much he knew, but the ship was busy estimating how badly. After a moment, she began to fill him in on Nefrem tactics.

Nemesis would require two or more years just to resume normal functioning after its release, at which point it would still be too weak for interstellar travel. It would enter emergency resource acquisition mode. Scouts would be constructed and sent to locate nearby accumulations of life, followed by fleets that would strip and return digestible biomass. The process would continue until the living planet was at nominal strength, with no fewer than three full invasion fleets. That could take anywhere from ten to forty years, depending on the population of nearby stars, and after that, real conquest would begin.

"I've got good news and bad news," Marcus said. "The bad news is that they're definitely free, and we have no way of knowing how many planets have already fallen. The good news is that their living planet won't be at full strength yet. Not like it was during the war, at least. More of a large living asteroid."

"Will they come for Earth?" Faulkland asked. "Should we be mounting defenses?"

Marcus shook his head. "No, they won't be coming here. She's pretty certain of that. As far as they know, our system is dead and insignificant. It's like a hypnotic suggestion. They'll eventually see through it, though, and we must have them on the defensive before that happens. If they get here, it'll already be too late.

"It's imperative that we get the ship back in working order as soon as possible... there should be enough raw material here in the asteroid belt to make repairs. Then we return to Earth and start building our own fleet. All life in the galaxy depends on it."

"Do you know how to do any of that?" St. Martin asked.

Marcus shook his head. "Not exactly, but we'll figure it out." The ship told him they'd figure it out together, then she passed another message that Marcus thought strange. It was a request. "She's digging around in my head, trying to get a hang on how we process thoughts. Our language, the syntax and ways we name things. It's all messy and very new to her. She... she wants me to give her a name."

"Go ahead," Faulkland said. "I've always had a weakness for bird names, myself."

Rao looked at Marcus seriously. "Something better than Zebra-One, this time."

Marcus ran through a string of names, some girls, others historic ships, but none of them seemed appropriate. She was more than just a vessel. She was a remembrance of things forgotten... a gift and a responsibility handed down from the past.

Then the name came to him. "It's only right to call her
Legacy,
" he said.

And Legacy approved.

In the first week following the invasion, what struck Jack most was the quiet. Not silence, but the serene quiet of wilderness in the absence of man. It was the quiet of civilization's demise.

It took a little time to set in. The sound of alien craft filled the air at first, while ground troops overran the ruins of humanity and rounded up the last survivors. But after a few days, there was simply nothing and no one left. With their task complete, the bastards withdrew and left nothing behind but the piles of dead, the unsettling quiet and the furious howling of the dust filled wind.

As the second week began, the next thing that struck Jack was the smell. Although his gas mask kept the dust out of his lungs, it did little to obscure the stench of death that hung in the air. He would've done anything to get that smell out of his nose, but there was simply no escape.

At least they were in sparsely populated rural areas; he didn't dare imagine what the cities smelled like.

The invaders were still on Earth, though. That much was certain. The cycling sound of their cuttlefish craft occasionally sounded high overhead, but they never came down, never bothered. They had better places to be than in that stinking and defeated wasteland. China held no more mystery for them. No more resistance.

The enemy had exclusively targeted humans, killing them and moving on, never staying longer than it took to perform the extermination. This turned out to be a boon to Jack and his makeshift team, though. While buildings of every kind had been laid to waste, vehicles, roads and bridges were left untouched. Food was easy enough to find and several places still had water pressure. Fuel cells were scattered everywhere amongst the rubble, whole and functioning thanks to their crash-proof cases.

On the eighth day, while the team sat on the edge of yet another ruined village, Jack decided time had come to find transportation. "Anyone know how to hot-wire a car?"

He still didn't know his new corpsmen from Adam. They were jumpsuits with nametags and gas-masks. That would've been unacceptable at any other point in his career, but no one was feeling particularly social for some reason.

In response to his question, one of the jumpsuits raised his hand. The tag said
Chase.

Jack was a little surprised there was only one, actually. The Corps tended to attract a lot of people with troubled pasts looking for a new start.

"Good. Nicotine, you and Chase head out and find some wheels."

"Roger. Whaddya have in mind? A flatbed?"

"Anything with ground clearance and storage space. Windows intact if you can manage it. It'd be nice to get this mask off for a bit. I suppose a troop transport would be too much to ask."

"Dream on." Nikitin glanced over at Chase, and gave him a nod. "We'll see what we can find. Meet you back here in an hour?"

"That's fine. The rest of us are gonna round up supplies. We passed a promising looking market on the way in."

"My Chinese isn't too sharp," Albright said, "but that looks like a pharmacy over there. I'd like to stock up on medical supplies."

"Make it happen." Jack looked at the other three corpsmen and picked one at random. "Take McGrath with you."

"Roger."

"Alright. That means Hartnell and Cozar, you're with me. One hour. Get it done."

With that, they broke. Jack waved his team on, and they headed back toward the eastern side of the village where he'd spotted the market.

He wouldn't let anyone know, but he didn't like the ghost towns. He had little problem in the countryside where quiet was to be expected, but walking down abandoned streets at midday was a whole different matter. A constant feeling haunted him, like he was standing on a stage without actors. It was almost unbearable.

The market was a one-story that had partially collapsed. Several large woven baskets full of decaying fruits and vegetables sat out front, and the smell of rotting seafood filled Jack's mask. It was something of a welcome change.

The inside was dark and musty, and the team brought out their flashlights. The pungent smell of mold joined the rotting fish. "Water first, then canned foods. Fruits, vegetables, meat. Dried goods are fine. Build a pile by the door, and we'll load up when Nikitin and... um, Chase find a car."

Something made a dull clank on the far side of the room. "Did you hear that?" one of them asked.

"Just some rubble falling," the other answered.

Jack wasn't sure. He motioned to stop, then put his finger in front of his mask. Hartnell and Cozar took the hint and quieted down.

He pulled the flare gun from its makeshift holster and unlatched the safety. He wasn't confident it would even sting one of the invaders, but it was better than nothing. Maybe it'd confuse them. He hoped it was better than nothing.

Another clank sounded, and some cans clattered to the floor. There was the sound of something scurrying. Voices?