Hena Day One

by Odette C. Bell

  With no answers, all Shane had were questions, and they felt as if they were tearing him up from the inside out.

  But more than anything – more than anything – he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  She looked… like a pillar. She wasn’t tall, she wasn’t broad, she didn’t have a body that suggested strength at all. But as she stood there and faced the armored man who was a good two feet taller than her, she didn’t shrink back.

  And the effect was like staring at an anchor weighing down a ship in a storm. The rest of the world might be crumbling, falling apart under the wings of uncertainty, but Alice stood still like a homing beacon calling everyone back to safety.

  “Detected nonhuman sophisticated bipedal readings,” the armored man said as he extended a finger toward Alice. His armor didn’t creak – there was no sound at all. In fact, there was the absence of sound, almost as if something was actively blocking it.

  But that fact could not detract from what he’d just said. Shane had read enough science fiction to understand what non-human bipedal reading meant.

  Alien.

  … What…?

  He didn’t get the chance to finish that thought.

  Alice laughed. It was low and unquestionably emotional. He simply couldn’t figure out what that emotion was.

  If you’d asked Shane before, he would’ve said 150 percent that Alice didn’t have emotions. She was one of those closed, blocked-off people who reminded you of a robot. Sure, some psychoanalyst might say she was just repressed. Shane would’ve doubted it. Shane would’ve told you there was nothing going on behind Alice’s vacant brown eyes.

  Now he detected more.

  “So you’re here to kill me?” Alice asked, her tone back to neutral. “I see you’re going around the world as we speak killing every single nonhuman sophisticated bio reading you can find.”

  “Correct. First wave,” the man said.

  Shane didn’t think he could feel any more adrenaline. He was wrong. His back practically shuddered with it as his muscles begged him to do something. Fight or flee – just do more than kneel here.

  “I need to warn you of something,” Alice said as the man took a step toward her.

  The man brought his fingers forward, spreading them. It was then that Shane noticed there were seven.

  He… Jesus Christ, he was a goddamn alien.

  This… it couldn’t be happening.

  But the situation had no intention of slowing down to allow Shane the time to process the literally world-shattering news.

  As all seven of those appendages stretched out, the palm of the alien’s armor changed, little fragments of metal parting, again with no sound. They shifted up around his wrist, sinking back into the metal as if they weren’t a solid but rather a liquid.

  The hole they left in the alien’s arm seemed to reach down through his wrist and into his elbow.

  A hollowed-out chamber.

  And in that hollowed-out chamber a glow started to pick up. Blue and vibrant. It looked like a hot gas flame.

  Alice didn’t shift. “There’s something I need to warn you of,” she repeated.

  “No words. Nothing you can do. First wave is almost complete.”

  “If you attack me, I will defend myself. Under the Hysian Accords, I will defend myself,” she repeated.

  Shane didn’t follow a word. He didn’t have to. He was a student of psychology, and Alice’s expression and body language told him one thing. She wasn’t afraid. In any way. As the man took a step toward her, that glowing chamber sunk through his arm burning brighter like white phosphorus fire, Alice looked impassive.

  “You cannot defend yourself,” the alien said.

  Alice looked up. Slowly. And again Shane saw it. The calculated, precise movements of a snake. The coordinated, masterfully precise choreography of a predator. Not prey. “Then you do not know who I am.”

  “Irrelevant. Die,” the alien said.

  The energy building up in the hole in his palm finally discharged, shooting toward Alice instantaneously.

  And it struck her. Right in the chest. Right in the center of her clavicle.

  Physics told him it would rip through her body and send her spiraling down off the side of the ridge below. It would tear her chest apart with all the ease of a samurai sword slicing through paper.

  The heat of the blast would cauterize her skin, boiling her blood until it evaporated into gas.

  But none of that happened.

  The blast slammed into her chest and discharged against a faint blue glow.

  The people in the tour group who still had their voices – who hadn’t become hoarse with terror – screamed.

  Shane stared. His eyes opened wider, and wider again. A faint blue glow now picked up over Alice.

  She reached up, grabbed the straps of her pack, and loosened them with one strong yank. The shoulder straps widened until the pack overbalanced and fell off her diminutive form. It struck the rock behind her as she took a step forward.

  That blue glow still covered her, from the soles of her thick track boots, to the tips of her mousy blonde hair. The light seemed to be shifting, undulating as if it were a wave – a wave of energy that was somehow sitting above her flesh like a veneer of ocean swell.

  The armored alien took a double take. Shane couldn’t see the alien’s face, but that didn’t matter. It was in the sudden twitch of his shoulders and the fact his boots crushed the fine rocks behind him as he took a jerked step back. “You—”

  “I am a Peacekeeper. And under the Hysian Accords you should not have attacked me.”

  The alien brought his hand up in a defensive move.

  It was too late.

  Alice moved. She moved faster than a human. Faster than a cheetah. Faster than any animal on earth. In a flash, she closed the distance between her and the alien, and that blue wave over her body pulsed into her hand, disappearing from her flesh as it formed a sword.

  She thrust it right through the center of the alien’s chest.

  His armor could do nothing. It split apart, whatever sound dampening effect it had been casting breaking as the alien inside broke at the same time.

  There was a hiss of gas, of atmosphere escaping, and caught amongst it, the hiss of a dying creature’s breath.

  Alice opened her hand, and her sword disappeared, pulling back through the hole in the alien’s armor, covering her hand, then growing over her body until it sat over her flesh once more.

  The alien fell to his knees and clattered to the side, every sound of his armor now as loud as a bell.

  Alice stood there and stared down, the wind catching the loose strands of her hair and sending them tumbling around her face.

  She looked stark. Strong.

  The alien twitched, its head lolling to the side as its helmet tilted and twisted to her.

  “You shouldn’t have invaded,” she said.

  “Nothing… you can do. Hysian Accords,” the alien spluttered.

  “Even under the Accords, if you attack me, I will attack back.”

  “But you can’t do anything more. Hysian Accords,” the alien hissed once more, its voice becoming harsher, as if it was being pushed through a tube. “How much… this planet… worth to you?”

  Alice stood above the alien, never moving as the wind scattered faster around her hair.

  The light covering her body flickered, and for just a second, it concentrated in her palm again, but then she relaxed her hand.

  Shane could see the side of her face, and again he picked it up. That complicated emotion he’d caught a glimpse of before. The one that told him that her previously blank personality hid uncharted depths.

  The alien spluttered through a laugh. “There are only 7 billion people here. Only one world. The Accords cover over 100,000. You… Peacekeepers can count.”

  Alice didn’t reply.

  The alien spluttered once more before its head rolled to the side and it was finally still.

  The
wind picked up, now practically roaring over the ridge. It whisked the small white clouds faster through the sky until Shane caught a glimpse of that far off black dot.

  His back stiffened, his mind suddenly telling him it was growing larger, that the ship was coming back around.

  “We need to get off this ridge,” Shane finally found his voice. “Before that thing comes back.”

  He didn’t know why he was speaking. He didn’t know if Alice would pay attention to him or kill him and the rest of the group.

  He did know one thing, though. The world had just changed. In an instant. And be damned if he was going to die up here on this lonely, desolate peak.

  Alice slowly tilted her head and looked at him. “They won’t come back.”

  “How do you know that?” he spluttered.

  “The Cartaxian sent a low-frequency subspace message before it died.”

  “The Cartaxian?”

  Alice extended a finger toward the dead alien’s body.

  Shane gulped. “Then—”

  “They will not return. Even to retrieve their armor. Your group is safe here.”

  “Won’t… won’t they care about him? Or it?” Shane stumbled over his words as he pointed at the Cartaxian.

  Alice stared back impassively. “Cartaxians do not value single lives.”

  “What does that mean?” Maybe there were other questions Shane should be asking right now. Hell, definitely there were other questions that Shane should be asking right now. He’d just seen his first alien, and the underperforming, apparently diminutive tour guide he’d been ready to sack when the trip was over had turned out to be something called a Peacekeeper. But his brain couldn’t process anymore than what was right in front of him.

  His personality felt fractured, as if someone had painted a picture of all the things that made up Shane then thrown that picture off the precipitous cliff to his side.

  “The Cartaxians are an inveterate warring race made up of three key subspecies from the Cartax Colonies. They have a strict spiritual hierarchy.”

  “Spiritual hierarchy?” he stuttered.

  The rest of the tour group was starting to pick themselves up, none of them daring to venture too close to Alice or the dead Cartaxian. But fortunately, none of them were running away, either.

  “The Cartaxians maintain that it is only by taking that one can attain. It is at the heart of their spirituality. Those who have taken more ascend through the ladder of their hierarchy.”

  “I,” Shane gulped, “don’t understand.”

  “She means the more they kill, the higher up they get in their society, right?” Chan asked, his voice remarkably controlled compared to Shane’s.

  Alice glanced at him and nodded. “To the Cartaxians, each of their lives is a hole. A hole they must fill with other’s lives. The nature of being conscious is to consume other conscious creations.”

  Shane felt like throwing up. “And… this… this race is… invading—”

  “Planet Earth? Correct. The Fold must’ve fallen.”

  “Fold?” Chan asked quickly.

  “A subspace fold that once kept Earth hidden from the rest of the universe. The rest of the real universe,” she corrected, emphasizing the word real with a puff of air.

  This was… all too much to take in.

  Shane had always believed in aliens. But aliens far away – beyond the Milky Way, maybe, out into the rest of the practically unfathomable universe. Not here. And not like this.

  His back was now so cold, it felt as if the damn thing had been carved from ice.

  “What do we do?” Chan asked.

  Alice looked at him. “Stay here. You have food and water. Find shelter.”

  “And then what?” It felt like there was a hand around Shane’s throat. And that hand was his every growing realization. His family back in Melbourne, his girlfriend, his brothers. Everyone. Every friend, every acquaintance. What the hell was happening to them now? Just how many of those Cartaxians were there? Just what cities were they hitting?

  “Nothing. Stay here. There is nothing else you can do.”

  “You’re not going to stay with us?” Chan asked perceptively.

  Alice ticked her gaze to the side. “No.” It took her a long time to respond, and when she did, Shane saw it again – that flicker of something underneath the surface. He caught it for longer this time, long enough that he could appreciate what it was.

  Frustration.

  Deep, soul-crushing frustration.

  A frustration his simple human mind would never be able to fully conceive of.

  “You can’t leave us alone,” Shane tried.

  “I can, and I will. Whether I am with you or not is irrelevant. They will not return. They will be busy elsewhere.”

  Busy. That word… it was wrong. In every damn way. So fucking wrong. Those things were out there invading the goddamn Earth, and—

  “Don’t waste your emotional energy,” Alice stated simply and brutally as she looked Shane right in the eyes.

  Shane couldn’t hold back the tide of fear, anger, and desperation that climbed his throat, tightening around every trachea fold like a noose. “The world’s ending—”

  “Incorrect. The Earth’s been invaded. Whether it will end or not will be entirely up to the efforts of your race.”

  “What are you? What are you going to do? I heard what he called you. A Peacekeeper. I saw what you can do,” Shane said as he pointed a shaking finger at the corpse of the Cartaxian.

  “I’m bound by the Accords.”

  “Then who is going to help us?” Shane spat.

  “Others.”

  For just a second, hope rebounded in his heart, pushing back the dark cloud of desperate depression that had pushed over him like a storm. “You mean there are others like you? Other aliens on Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’ll help?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you won’t?”

  Alice paused. The wind still whipped around her, catching her mousy brown hair and sending it scattering over her face, the quick, whip-like movements of each strand framing her eyes.

  And the look in her eyes was unmistakable.

  She looked like a woman on the edge. It reminded him exactly of the expression she’d held when she’d faced the Cartaxian and it had asked her if she would break the Accords.

  But then she closed her eyes. “No, I will not help. But I will observe. Stay here, and you will be safe,” she said as she took a step backward toward the edge of the cliff.

  For a second, Shane’s heart fluttered with fear, then he remembered what she was. If being shot by an enormous, powerful blast of blistering hot white-blue energy couldn’t damage her, then he really doubted a tumble off a cliff could.

  “And if we don’t want to stay here, if we want to help – what do we do?” Chan asked, his words quick.

  “You work in the weapons industry,” Alice said after a pause.

  Chan nodded.

  “They will not return for that,” she said as she extended a finger toward the Cartaxian’s armor.

  Chan slowly nodded. “I understand.”

  Did he? Because Shane didn’t. “You’ve got to help us,” he tried once more.

  “You have to help yourselves.” With that, Alice took several steps back, then one final step that took her right off the side of the ridge.

  Everyone gasped.

  Alice didn’t fall.

  Shane saw that flicker of blue energy covering her boots, extending out beneath her like a step.

  She shifted back again, her whole body now simply floating in the air.

  “Give us an edge,” Chan said. “I’ve never seen armor like this. I don’t even know how to remove it. Is it safe? Does that alien carry… dangerous bacteria or other microbes?”

  She paused. Paused as she floated there in the air, a southwesterly blast of wind rushing up from underneath her as it charged up the side of the cliff. It untucked her j
acket from around her hips and sent it slamming into her arms. It made her hair stand on end, the strands curling around like fingers grasping toward the sky.

  Shane couldn’t tell what Alice was. He had no idea what these Accords were, but he could tell they bound Alice in some way.

  “Is it safe?” Chan demanded once more.

  “It can’t kill you.”

  “What about the alien’s body?”

  “It would have discharged by now.”

  “Discharged?”

  “The armor would have broken it down.”

  “How do I open it?” Chan demanded.

  “With your intelligence. The only weapon you will have against the Cartaxians. Now learn how to wield it.” With that, Alice tumbled backward.

  By the time Shane rushed up to the side of the cliff, she was somehow out of sight. He didn’t see her tumbling form catching the light as it shot down the side of the peak.

  It was as if she’d disappeared.

  But then, just as his heart stilled with fear, he saw a flash of blue blasting up into the clouds above.

  He watched it until it was out of sight.

  Then Shane fell to his knees.

  Planet Earth was being invaded, and this was only day one.

  Chapter 5

  Amal

  04:00, South London, United Kingdom

  “This is insane. It’s insane,” John spluttered in his South London accent as the balding 40-year-old brought a hand up, clapped it on the top of his skull, and dug his white fingers in.

  Amal shifted forward, brought an arm up, and clapped his large hand on John’s shoulder, his black skin stark against John’s blue Metropolitan Police Force uniform. Amal ticked his head down, folding his tall form in half as he looked into his friend’s eyes. “We have a job to do. Let’s do it.”

  “You’ve seen the news,” John could barely push his words out. “You saw that footage from Vietnam – you heard the reports filtering around the world. The Earth is being invaded by something.”

  An ordinary person wouldn’t be able to pick up John’s muttered, jumbled words.

  Amal wasn’t ordinary. He looked deeply into his friend’s eyes, trying to ignite the bravery he knew was within.

  At first, Amal hadn’t been able to draw parallels between his own people and those of his adoptive world, Earth. But over the years, he’d seen it.