Hena Day One

by Odette C. Bell

  But even if she were to apply to the Senate for permission, they would not grant it.

  Nobody in the modern universe – including the truly ancient races like the Peacekeepers – knew who or what had created the Folds or how they’d managed it.

  The Folds were simply a fact of existence. Perhaps a quirk of creation itself to ensure that burgeoning races could develop on their own without the interference of the rest of the modern universe.

  But even if the exact details of the creation of the Folds and their ultimate purpose were unknown, the rules relating to them and the Hysian Accords were simple. All planets behind Folds were not considered part of the modern universe, and the Accords only applied to the modern universe.

  She tipped her head up further, staring up the side of the closest cloud bank. Even from here, she could feel the subspace, quantum disruptions pulsing out of the ship at the center of the meteorological mass.

  Her skin tingled with them, and her body shook with other sensations that would be impossible to describe to a human.

  Even if the Hysian Accords related to the Earth, and there was a clause offering protection, Hena still wouldn’t be able to act. There was a strict moratorium on Peacekeepers attacking the Cartaxians. The Cartaxians were an ancient race, a warring, violent race that had been a stain on the universe for eons. But because they were an ancient race, and because, over the years, the Peacekeepers had fought them repeatedly, the Accords protected the Cartaxians. Very few of the original races – the very first intergalactic civilizations – still existed. And all remaining eight of them were protected, excluding her own.

  Considering the violent history between her people and the Cartaxians, the Accords strictly protected the Cartaxians, lest her people hunt them to extinction.

  So Hena was trapped, and her path forward was clear.

  She could not stop this invasion. To do so would risk her entire race. The remaining Peacekeepers in the modern universe were few and far between. They existed on a knife’s edge. They had gone against the Senate’s wishes too many times. And if any member of the Peacekeepers did so again, this time, there might be no going back.

  She partially closed her eyes, concentrating on her integrated senses as she picked up a sudden influx of energy from the closest ship.

  … Without the ability to do anything, Hena would have to observe. So once more she threw her hand to the side and created a pocket of space around her body. She cut through the normal barriers dividing matter, and she transported.

  If the least she could do was watch the demise of this planet, to observe these people’s last moments, then that was what she would do. She would bear witness to what was about to come.

  Chapter 10

  Nick Hancock

  Nick ran. Faster than he ever had in his life. Faster than his body should allow. His joints should have given up by now. His knees should’ve crumbled. The cartilage should have goddamn turned into dust. But that didn’t matter. There was nothing that could stop him. He swore with every step he took, he just got faster. His shoes were disintegrating under his feet as he slammed them into the bitumen pavement beneath him. But even as the pads of his feet pushed into the unyielding ground, it didn’t matter. Nothing seemed capable of cutting him.

  Nick could no longer deny that something fundamental was happening to him. Nor, crucially, could he deny the effect that ship above was having on him.

  Nick had always felt his feelings deeply. Men who try to push themselves off bridges are certainly not immune to the burden of emotion.

  But now his body was… pulsing with feelings. It wasn’t just the fact he could now somehow pick up heat signatures with his naked eyes. He could sense so much more. And his perception of the world was growing more intricate with every second.

  He could now judge obstacles by whether he could push them out of the way or leap over them. He could virtually see the world not as it was, but as a map of how he could interact with it. Things were instantly more tangible, and yet surreal at the same time.

  Though the rational, sane part of Nick’s brain that couldn’t believe what was happening to him wanted to find help, the rest of him was caught up in only one task. Getting to that ship. Getting into the center of London so he could be there when the invasion started in full.

  He played around with that word in his head. It rang right between his years, bashing around his skull like a sledgehammer to his gray matter. The Earth he had always called home was on an edge. On a cliff. And the next several hours would decide whether it was pushed off or saved.

  Had Nick always believed in aliens? He’d always believed they were statistically likely, sure. But as he’d already pointed out, he’d believed in aliens far away and long into the future. He’d believed that when humanity finally gained the capacity for interstellar travel, they would come across sentient creatures, sure, but not of the same caliber as people. Unusual bacteria and slime molds and maybe even more complicated multicellular organisms – but not this. Not living, breathing aliens with the same level of brutal intelligence as people.

  Nick was vaguely aware of the chaos around him. Of the traffic lining the roads. Of people screaming. Of their sheer desperation.

  There were police and troops, but it was still early in the morning, and under the veil of darkness, he managed to skirt around them, ducking out of the way down laneways, jumping right over cars if he had to.

  Some people saw him, some people screamed – but no one got in his way.

  … Got in his way to do what, though? Though something was unquestionably happening to Nick, and he’d found some hitherto unknown power within himself, was it really going to be enough to take on an entire ship and an entire alien army?

  They were good questions, but they couldn’t stop him. It didn’t seem anything could.

  Nick ran until his shoes finally gave way, tearing out from underneath him, chunks of the old rubber scattering over the street as the leather that held them together tore and fell into a drain by his side.

  The closer he came to central London, the more troops and police he faced.

  But if he expected a coordinated response, he didn’t get it. They lined the streets, sure, and they waited, most of them with their heads held high, staring at the belly of the great ship that now sat low over London.

  But whatever that ship was planning, it hadn’t attacked yet.

  The crazy tall, puffy, billowing clouds that had heralded the arrival of the vessel still encased its sides, looking like great dark curtains made from the very heavens that were paring back to reveal Earth’s final show.

  The darkness no longer affected Nick, and it sure as hell didn’t stop him from seeing the belly of the vessel above in full. It was sleek, and though it was wholly made out of an unusual black metal that caught the light and stored it up, here and there, where its enormous hull plates were joined together, there were thick slices of an almost luminescent silver-gray metal that glinted under the force of their own light. They outlined the massive vessel, pushing back the dark night and ensuring the entire city could see exactly what was above it.

  Nick ran. And ran. And ran. He barely breathed. He never got tired.

  In fact, he could feel his body continuing to change right from underneath him, his muscles re-knitting until they were impossibly strong, his skeleton doing the same until it felt as if he could take on a mountain.

  But he would need more if he were to make the difference he was born to.

  Chapter 11

  Kim

  Kim had checked on Mi Na. She was fine.

  The rest of the city?

  That was yet to be seen.

  Before Kim had left the house – or at least the remnants of his aunt’s house – he’d grabbed his backup cell phone. Oh yeah, and a pair of pants and a new shirt. Now as he strode along the street, the scraps of the Cartaxian’s armor still rattling around in the metal box he’d saved from his burning garage, Kim didn’t bother to tilt his hea
d back and stare up at the impossible meteorological sight forming over Seoul.

  As people stopped and stared, he heard the sound of sirens further into the city.

  He smoothly walked to the side as somebody plowed around the tight cobbled corner of the street, their SUV riding up the broken curb and almost catching Kim.

  The desperate father of four inside didn’t bother to apologize. He just kept driving.

  South Korea was meant to be one of the most connected countries in the world. Everyone had a device, and everyone was on them 24/7.

  So, even though the invasion hadn’t begun here yet, nobody could ignore what was going on in Vietnam, or the unexplainable cloud masses popping up over the eastern coast of the USA and over the major cities of Europe.

  A woman ran past Kim, and she fell, her high heel twisting as it hit a groove in the cobble.

  Without taking his eyes off his device, and without dropping his box of reclaimed armor, he switched his phone to his other hand, hauled the woman up without even looking at her, and kept walking.

  Her thick black bob scattered around her face as she turned, muttered a thank you, and kept running.

  After a few more minutes, he walked past a tech store. In the window was a fancy new curved screen. He paused, twisting his gaze to the side, pulling it off the continuous readings coming in on his device, and he stared at the television.

  It was locked on one station. But that didn’t matter, because every single station was playing the exact same footage.

  The seemingly impossible cloud bank off the coast of Da Nang, Vietnam, had broken approximately 10 minutes ago.

  And the invasion had begun in full.

  Some news crew had dropped a camera on one of the beaches of Da Nang, and it was directed right out to sea.

  Kim paused as he watched a black mass break from the clouds. To the humans, it would be an utterly immense vessel. To Kim, he could appreciate it was nothing more than an advanced reconnaissance ship. One meant to house the gate that would be cutting through the Fold and allowing the Cartaxians access to Earth.

  The sea beneath the ship was practically boiling, and the clouds were struck through with red lightning.

  To the humans, it would look like the apocalypse.

  To Kim, it was just another invaded world.

  Which was a pity. He liked Earth.

  With a shrug, he turned to stare at his mobile once more, and he pushed off.

  He continued along the street.

  Now his endoskeleton had been activated in full and was being powered by the Cartaxian Q crystal, he could do more than one thing at once. Hell, he could do hundreds of things at once. He could easily pay full attention to the continuous feed of critical information coming over his cell phone while at the same time maintaining full awareness of the street around him.

  He shifted to the side, deviating across the pavement just before a kid could run out in front of a troop carrier plowing down the street.

  He yanked the kid back, turned him around with a hand on his head, and pushed him back along the pavement.

  Kim no longer needed his thumb to interact with his phone. He sent wireless commands through his endoskeleton. He kept monitoring, not just news stations, but meteorological data reports. He’d hacked into the feed of the geostationary Japanese weather satellite, Himawari 8.

  The satellite’s 16 channel multispectral imager was set to capture infrared images of the Asia-Pacific region, and it was the best way to track the oncoming invasion. It was also the best way to ascertain how wide the subspace gate was the Cartaxians had opened above the South China Sea.

  The answer was it was wide enough for a small invasion force – maybe 10 ships in total, all larger than the original gate vessel.

  That was more than enough to hit key cities around the globe. Still, it wouldn’t be the full Cartaxian force. And until they found a way to open the gate wider on Earth, he doubted a full force would come through.

  To do that – to widen the gate above the South China Sea – they’d need two things. Time and power. The power would come, presumably, from Q-type generators the Cartaxians would’ve brought with them in their first wave of strike vessels. But the same generators, presumably, would be running the ships. To preserve energy, they would want a swift, quick victory over Planet Earth.

  If it could be delayed, and if the Cartaxians could be forced to use more power to subdue the Earth, then humanity could have a chance.

  Could being the operative word.

  The odds were stacked against them.

  But they would have one advantage. The other resident aliens who’d been inhabiting Earth before the attack. Kim doubted he would be the only one who would’ve survived the Cartaxian assassination attempts.

  So all he would have to do was find them.

  Still staring at his phone and watching the infrared images of the Pacific coming in from the Himawari satellite, Kim deviated several meters to the left just as an old man clutched a hand to his heart and staggered toward a park bench.

  Kim reached out a hand, leveled it on the guy’s shoulder, and sent a calculated blast of electricity into the man’s heart before he could suffer from sudden ventricular fibrillation.

  Just before the guy could collapse sideways, Kim restarted his heart. “Get to a hospital,” he muttered.

  Then he walked on.

  The sensors in his endoskeleton started to pick up a sudden change in pressure on the city streets. Even ordinary humans would be able to sense it. The pressure in their inner ears would be desperately trying to equalize as the barometric pressure dropped precipitously.

  Kim paused. He looked up.

  Clouds were streaming across the sky, pushed on not by the wind, but by subspace vents – filaments opening up through space, controlled by the Cartaxian ships.

  It would be the precursor to one of their strike ships arriving.

  Kim breathed. Did he need to? The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide from his lungs to the outer world sure had kept him fitting in with humans over the years, but the alien within did not need to breathe, and God knows his endoskeleton was far too sophisticated to require simple inhalations to keep going.

  But he breathed anyway. Either to fit in, or to remind himself of one key fact. When Kim had become a human to fit in, he’d become something more.

  Humanity had a somewhat unique concept – or one that was unique to his race, at least.

  That of a person.

  A quality of sentience that was above the mere body of a Homo Sapiens.

  If you displayed a certain level of consciousness, and if you used that consciousness to interact and connect with others, you became a person.

  Kim would never be human, but he fancied himself a person.

  So he would fight.

  Chapter 12

  Linh

  Linh continued to battle through the forest, Harry behind her.

  She could feel him slipping further into desperation with every second.

  It wasn’t just what she’d revealed to him. It was the constant sound of jets scrambling overhead, interspersed every five minutes with a certain sound. One that rang out over the jungle and shook down through everything, one sharp enough to burst human eardrums.

  She would make him kneel down on his knees and clamp his hands over his head several seconds before the blast would ring out.

  She didn’t bother protecting herself.

  There was no point.

  “How much… how much—” Harry began, but lost track of his conversation as once again a jet scrambled overhead.

  “How much longer until we reach my vessel? About 10 minutes. If it’s still there.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That other aliens might’ve picked it dry already.”

  “Aliens?” His voice shook. “You mean the invaders?”

  “No, I mean other aliens like me. Crash landers or people who got beyond the Fold for some other purpose. Though I t
ried over the years to hide the signal of my ship, who knows what kind of other aliens are on Earth and what their capabilities are.”

  “… You mean there are more like you?”

  She snorted. “Of course there are. I’ve seen a few, here and there. Felt them, too – if they weren’t good at hiding themselves.”

  “Do they control the world?” Harry asked out of the blue.

  Though it was hardly a laughing situation, Linh couldn’t help herself, and she paused, her hand pushing away a large jungle vine. She tilted her head back and laughed. “Definitely not. You humans love your conspiracy theories.”

  “Why not, though? If they have… technology better than ours, and if they can… if they can do that,” Harry said as he brought a shaking hand up and pointed at the sky, indicating the massive cloud stack that was now pushing high into the furthest reaches of the atmosphere, “why wouldn’t they control the world?”

  Linh pressed her lips together. There was only so much more Harry could take. If she kept inundating the poor man with more information it wouldn’t just shatter his world, it would shatter his sanity, too.

  But he’d asked, and Linh was not one to keep facts from others. “They would be too scared to.”

  “What does that mean?” Harry said, a quick note of hope infiltrating his tone.

  “It means…” she paused. “It means the Fold,” she supplied eventually. “They would be scared of it.”

  “What’s the Fold?”

  “Call it a veil – one that keeps you hidden from the rest of the modern universe. One, until the invaders broke through, that kept you safe, too.”

  “I don’t get it. If you aliens are meant to be scared of it, why did the invaders break through it?”

  Linh snorted. It was a good question, after all. One she was battling to understand.

  If a race was smart, they feared the Folds. Those great forces that separated pre-interstellar civilizations from those who had mastered spaceflight.

  The Folds were… ancient. It was more than that, though. They possessed an intelligence. Keen, sharp, and powerful. That wasn’t a fact taught in the modern universe, but it was one her race had always been able to feel.