“And the demons were destroyed?” Faulkland asked.
“No. I know this sounds impossible, but it was only a prison. The Nefrem technology was capable of channeling and redirecting the star’s energy into a protective shell. 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 leads to the ‘us being aliens’ part. 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,” Juliette said.
“Yep. And we’re the Eireki reborn.”
“Then why aren’t we telepathic?”
“So we could fight the living planet,” Marcus said. “Telepathy was an amazing boon to the Eireki people, but it also became their greatest weakness. They couldn’t even approach the enemy because of it. The ship claims there have been unexpected side effects, though. They never had culture anything like ours, for instance.”
“Wait,” Professor Caldwell said. He’d been listening intently the whole time, but the story was just now 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?”
“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 retroviruses. The rest is history.”
“And the ship?”
“Came here, wrapped herself in a cocoon and slept away the eons, waiting for us to reclaim her.”
“I’ve never been a fan of exogenesis theories,” Juliette said, “but at least you didn’t tell me alien astronauts built the pyramids.”
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 us this thing’s made of delicious marshmallow floating in a giant cup of cocoa, and I don’t think anyone would bat an eye.”
“It’s a little disappointing,” Professor Caldwell said, “I mean, it’s all fantastic beyond belief. Don’t get me wrong. But my entire career is about piecing together theories about ancient peoples. Instead, all the answers have been laid out on a silver platter.”
“I dunno,” Rao said, “it’s 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 the ship. And 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 there,” Caldwell said.
Faulkland dramatically coughed into his hand. “Excuse me, but am I the only one wondering about the dark, evil space demons? And what the hell is this room, anyway?”
“This room,” Marcus said, “is the bridge.”
As he spoke, the walls faded from white to black, 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 one hell of 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 Nefrem, 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 howdy-doo.”
A memory suddenly surged through Marcus’ mind, and he assumed it was the ship’s doing. The memory was vivid, like being back there again. 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 damn,” 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, right?”
“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, he knew that much, and the ship was busy estimating how badly. After a moment, she began to fill him in on Nefrem tactics.
The Nemesis would require two to three 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 battle 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 big 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?” Juliette 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 girls’ names, myself.”
Rao looked at Marcus seriously. “Something better than Zebra-One, this time.”
Marcus ran through a string of girls’ names, but none of them seemed appropriate. This ship was more than just a vessel. She was a remembrance of things forgotten. She was a gift and a responsibility handed down from the past. Then the name came to him. “It’s only right to call her Legacy.”
Legacy approved.
Chapter 17:
Survival
What struck Jack in the first week following the invasion 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. At first, the sound of alien craft filled the air, while ground troops overran the ruins and rounded up the last survivors. Then, after less than a week, there was 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. 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 were 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. They never bothered. They had better places to be than in that stinking wasteland. China was defeated, and 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. While buildings of every kind had been laid to waste, vehicles, roads and bridges were left untouched. Food was easy enough to find and quite a few places still had water pressure. Fuel cells were scattered everywhere amongst the rubble, whole and functioing thanks to their crash-proof casings.
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 and gas-masks with nametags, and nothing more. That would’ve been unacceptable at any other point in his career, but no one was feeling particularly social.
One of the jumpsuits raised his hand. The tag on his chest said Chase. Jack was a little surprised there was only one, actually. The Corps attracted loads of people with troubled pasts.
“Good. Nicotine, you and Corpsman Chase head out and find us some wheels.”
“Roger. Whaddya have in mind? A flatbed?”
“Anything with some 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 if we’ve got the time.”
“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 kept it well hidden, 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 in the middle of the day was a whole different matter. A constant feeling of something missing haunted him, like he standing on a stage without actors. The feeling of emptiness was 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 as Jack approached the door, the smell of rotting sea food filled his mask. It was something of a welcome change.
The inside was dark and musty, and they 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… 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 so 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. 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?
Jack advanced along one wall and motioned for the others to take the opposite side. Their flashlights danced along shelves as they moved in on the source of the noise. Jack raised his own flashlight with the flare gun at its side and found… nothing.
He muttered, “What the hell’s going on here?”
The other two were standing opposite him now, shoulders shrugged and heads on a swivel. What was he missing?
There was another sound. Whispering? “Does anyone else hear that, or did I pick a bad time to start hallucinating?”
“I hear it,” Cozar said.
“Me too,” added Hartnell while she took a step forward. “Seems to be coming from the floor, chief. Hard to tell with this damned mask on, though.”
Jack took a good look at the floor. It was hard to make things out in the circle of his flashlight, so he started scanning around with it. There was a small carpet with a corner raised, and a circular patch of tiles suspiciously free of dust. “You may be on to something, Corpsman.”
He re-latched the gun’s safety and returned it to its holster, then lifted up the carpet. Beneath, he found a rectangular panel with a shiny metal handle.
“Trap door,” he said. “I think we have survivors.”
He didn’t want to say it for fear of getting his hopes up, but there it was. Survivors. He hadn’t seen anyone alive since the woman on the first day, and he didn’t want to think about that. Not ever again, if he could.
“Hold my flashlight,” he said as he shoved it into Cozar’s hand. Then he grabbed the handle and gave the door a good tug. It was heavier than he expected, but with a little effort, it opened and revealed a short wooden staircase leading into the darkness.
Something shifted in the shadows, and Jack heard breathing. He held out his hand and Cozar handed him the flashlight. For a second, he considered pulling the flare gun back out, but decided against it. If they were people, he didn’t want to panic them. Panicked people were unpredictable. On the other hand, if this was a trap, he was already screwed.
He took two tentative steps into the cellar, and ducked his head down to have a look around. His flashlight swept the small storage room, and what he saw made his breath catch in his throat. A family of six huddled in the cellar, dressed in torn and dirty clothes. They were looking at him with wide eyes like he was the reaper come to claim them. A mother and father, teenage daughter, two sons and an infant. The baby was coughing, and the mother rocked him, whispering something into his ear over and over again.
Jack didn’t know any Chinese beyond the names of entrées, and he even screwed those up half the time. Albright knew a little, but she was elsewhere.
“Hello?” he said.
No response.
He had another option. The Corps had developed a language so squads from different parts of the world could communicate on some basic level. It had a simple syntax and a small vocabulary, making it easy to learn, but severely limited. A corpsman could tell someone his job or where to go, but describing a movie plot would be next to impossible.
The Corps also made an effort to spread pamphlets around and offered free courses, with the goal of making it easier for corpsmen to communicate with refugees. ”-Please be calm-” Jack said. ”-I’m here to help-”
The children were sobbing, and their father tried to quiet them. No one reacted at all to what he said. Jack lifted his gas mask and tried again. ”-I’m here to help. Do you understand me?-”
Nothing. He wasn’t surprised. For all of the Corps’ efforts, he’d never met a single person outside of the Corps who understood it. He thought it was worth a try, though, and suspected the ERC administration felt more or less the same way.
“We’ve got live ones. Hartnell, gather some cloth and water so we can improvise masks. Sunglasses or goggles also if you can find them.”
It occurred to Jack that the poor folks couldn’t see anything but his flashlight. In their position, he’d be scared witless too. He slid the flashlight’s casing back and reconfigured it into a lantern, and the small supply room was filled with dim light. “I’m here to help,” he said in English, and motioned to the ERC patch on his shoulder.
Everyone around the world knew the symbol, two hands in a diamond, gripping each other at an angle as if one was helping the other up. The family recognized it, and this time, their reaction was instantaneous. Jack suddenly had two small boys hugging his legs, while the parents began to spew incomprehensible babble at him. The father was motioned to the mother, who in turn was propping up her still coughing infant. Jack didn’t understand the words, but the message came through clearly.
He removed his work glove and motioned towards the child. The mother nodded, and he reached out and felt its head. He wasn’t being particularly scientific, but the baby felt warm to the touch, and its eyes were red. That was enough to tell Jack he was out of his league.
“Cozar, get Albright and bring her back. Tell her we’ve got an infant with a fever and a cough.”
“Roger,” Cozar said, and he took off running. That was the right reaction. Jack was always glad to see a corpsman pound dirt when given a task.
The parents were still heatedly telling him something, and the father was making all kinds of motions with his hands, but the gestures didn’t help at all. He hoped whatever they were trying to tell him wasn’t too important.
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