Stars Rain Down

by Chris J. Randolph

  “Not yet,” Donovan said. “She’s giving you a tour.”

  This hatch also opened as the skiff approached, but all the way this time, opening like a flower to the morning sun. The many thousands of panels folded, each into the next, and Sal was hypnotized by all the machinery working perfectly in concert on such a large scale.

  “This chamber…” Donovan began to say.

  “Is a shipyard,” Sal finished his sentence. They had a distinctly alien flavor, but the bright orange docking rings were enough like wet docks in Earth orbit. She looked on excitedly and recognized the joints that would allow them to shrink or expand to accommodate ships of different shapes and sizes. Sal could puzzle out the uses of most of their tools, even with them lying dormant.

  A few were busy, constructing machines whose purposes she couldn’t guess at. The manipulator arms ducked and dodged around their queries at an incredible pace, occasionally stopping to weld a seam and produce a shower of golden sparks.

  Sal looked deep into the distance, and there were rings as far as the eye could see. “There are enough facilities here to work on hundreds… maybe thousands of ships simultaneously,” she said.

  Donovan nodded. “Once production ramps up, yes, but we don’t have the resources to put it all to use just yet. We will soon, though.”

  The skiff drifted along, and Sal watched every set of docking rings pass. Each manipulator arm she looked at extended and reseated itself, like saluting a passing officer. They wanted her to know they were fully functional and ready to go.

  “You said the ship reads minds?”

  “Give or take,” Donovan said. “Let’s just say that Legacy is very sensitive to certain kinds of thoughts, and leave it at that.”

  The skiff approached the end of the shipyard, and this time, there was a single mid-sized hatch surrounded by thousands of smaller replicas. “Those lead to the actual heart of the manufacturing complex, where components are gestated before being brought here for assembly. Past that is resource digestion. We can take a look at both if you like.”

  “Digestion?”

  Donovan nodded. “The tugs have their own ports in back where they deposit raw materials, which are then broken down for use in manufacturing. I make it sound technical, but it’s… not pretty.”

  “Say no more.”

  The inside of the skiff was quiet, as if everyone was waiting for someone else to speak. After far too long, Donovan smiled at Sal and asked, “So what do you say?”

  “To what?” she asked.

  He had a confused look on his face, as if the answer were as plain as day. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, “I have a bit of trouble with what has and hasn’t been said sometimes.” He gave the interface on the side of his head a quick tap.

  Sal had a sense she was being seduced, but into what she wasn’t entirely sure. As far as she knew, she’d been brought aboard to take a look around and help them design weapons. Or something.

  “This facility has astronomical potential, but in order for that potential to be fulfilled, it needs someone to run it. It needs an inventive mind to give it purpose and direction.”

  The answer dawned on her, and her eyes went wide with surprise.

  “I’d like you to run the factory,” Donovan said. “It would more or less be yours.”

  “This is too much,” Sal said, and she started to wave her hands in front of her. “I’m just a wrench jockey. I fix things that are broken, Doctor Donovan. I don’t run factories.”

  “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I know you’re much more than that. Your work is inspired, and you know it, too.”

  The woman physician, Doctor St. Martin, waved Donovan off. “Christ, you haven’t a subtle bone in your body, Marc. You’re putting too much pressure on her.”

  St. Martin had a warm smile and sharp, inquisitive eyes. Sal suspected this woman was their voice of reason, and the voice of reason went on, “Why don’t we put the skiff down and find some dinner? We can give Ms. Saladin a proper tour, and maybe show her some of the ongoing projects tomorrow. Does that sound alright?”

  Sal thought about it for a moment. “Everything’s so damn weird, I’m not sure what’s alright anymore. But I guess that’ll do.”

  With that, the skiff headed back toward the launch bay, and no one spoke of Donovan’s offer for the rest of the night.

  Chapter 26:

  The Weight

  Marcus Donovan was floating in the middle of his quarters. The walls were in crystal mode, as he’d taken to calling it, revealing the stars all around and the rust colored planet below. This was how he spent his down time; it was the closest he could get to the pure freedom experienced while reliving Legacy’s memory, back when she first plugged the interface into his head. He ached for that feeling, and the ache filled his thoughts and dreams. He just didn’t know how to make his longing a reality.

  While rooting around inside her mind, he often tripped other memories, but they were only faded images and dim sensations in comparison. They weren’t the rich, sensory complete experience he had that first time. He literally lost himself and became her, and it was the single most transformative moment of his life.

  Now, she resided permanently at one edge of his consciousness, a friend and confidante, but whole, separate and complete. There was no commingling, no question where one ended and the other began.

  Sometimes, Legacy wondered why Marcus was so eager to be rid of himself. She thought Eireki were the most beautiful things in all of creation, and the desire to escape that existence totally baffled her.

  Truth was that being out among the stars was all Marcus had ever wanted, though, and he just couldn’t ever explain it quite right. When it came right down to it, he wanted to be a ship. He consoled himself with the fact that for one titanic battle, he’d lived his dream. It was more than most people could say.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  He watched the stars and identified constellations for a while, until Legacy told him Amira Saladin was awake and inside the factory. The fact that Amira had trouble sleeping wasn’t surprising. Most people had some difficulty their first night aboard, thanks to the heartbeat rhythm audible throughout the ship.

  “She’s in the factory? That’s a good sign,” he said out loud. “She’ll come around. I promise.”

  Legacy told him again how excited she was by Amira’s presence. The woman had a vibrant imagination, and saw possibilities wherever she looked. Her thoughts were different somehow, radiant like a bright light amid darkness. She was more like the Eireki of old, and Legacy found that especially invigorating.

  She told Marcus to go give Amira a nudge in the right direction.

  “You’re not going to shut up about this, are you?”

  The whole of Legacy’s being communicated the word “No.”

  “Fine,” he said, “but let me talk to her alone. Really alone. No eavesdropping.”

  The ship reluctantly agreed.

  Marcus floated back down to the floor, threw on a shirt and some loose pants, and headed out the door. At the end of the corridor was a landing pad and transit tube, which carried him several kilometers to the factory where Amira Saladin was silently looking over the machinery. She had the look of someone thinking heavy thoughts.

  She was leaning against a railing that overlooked an assembly line. The manipulator arms and their panoply of tools were at rest, just waiting for a job to occupy them.

  Marcus walked across the empty floor and took a spot next to her. She didn’t react to his presence at all, but couldn’t have missed him. She would talk to him when she was ready, he assumed.

  And after an eternity, she did. “The future never quite works out how you expect, does it?”

  “Not as far as I’ve seen. Life would be pretty dull if it did.”

  “Maybe. It’d be nice for a change, though. I mean, when I was a kid, before my family came to Mars, I never ever would’ve guessed I’d become an engineer.”
r />   “You had something else in mind?”

  She laughed. “Yeah. Artist, all the way. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have paint on my hands. And my clothes. And my face. My mother still has all the goofy little pictures I made.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Mars happened. For my parents, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The kind of offer they couldn’t refuse, and me… Well, I came along. That’s the only choice a teenager has.”

  “There are only a couple constants in the universe, and one of them is that being a teen sucks. So, I take it there’s no market for art on Mars?”

  “I dunno. Thing’s change, so maybe. Probably stupid landscapes. There wasn’t back then, though. Art’s a luxury, and when we first made planetfall, life was hard. A lot harder than anyone expected. We all worked our fingers to the bone in the early days, adults and kids alike.”

  “And that’s how the painter became a wrench jockey.”

  “More or less. I had small hands, and I could reach where other people couldn’t. I hated it. I hated it so bad that whenever I fixed something, I made sure it stayed fixed so I wouldn’t have to fix it again.”

  They both laughed for a while. When the silence returned, she spoke again. “How about you, Doctor Marcus Donovan? What did you want to be?”

  “Me? I just wanted to be on Mars.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Completely serious. There wasn’t anything I wanted more. Rocketing through space, traipsing around alien worlds and meeting little green men. That was the dream, and Mars my first target. It was the only planet close enough to be realistic. The only one with the possibility of becoming more than a stupid kid’s fantasy.”

  “If it’s any consolation, you really didn’t miss anything. There was nothing on Mars but rocks and hard work.”

  “I know. I’d still have given my eye-teeth just to hold one of those rocks, though. I had to make due with a crappy telescope, and by God, I kept my face glued to it from sunset to sunrise, just dreaming about all the places I’d go if I got my chance. If you look close, I’ve still got a dent on my cheek from the eye-piece.”

  She looked at his face and started to giggle. “Oh God, I thought you were just saying that.”

  “I cheated,” he said. “Neglected to mention the part where my brother smacked the back of my head so hard that I needed ten stitches. What are brothers for, right?”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Nah. It gave me character. That’s what mom said, at least.”

  Sal smiled, but it faded quickly. “So, you always knew you were going to outer space?” She sounded wistful.

  “S’pose so. I went to university on a scholarship, got my degree in astronomy, and then it was straight into the Foundation. I got so wrapped up in the work that I kinda forgot about aliens and weird worlds, and just stared out into the unknown, hoping to discover some strange phenomenon to slap my name onto.”

  “Until you saw an alien ship.”

  “That was… clearly a turning point for me. I bet I wasn’t the first to see her. It just took someone half-crazy to recognize what she was.”

  “Is that when you became Mr. Fix-It?”

  “Yep. Doctor Donovan, patch kit and space gypsy. Most despised man in the Foundation, I reckon.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Say you’re working on a project, and the suits inform you that Marcus Donovan is being transferred to your station. How would you take it?”

  “Like a slap in the face.”

  “Right. I got used to steely gazes and professional sabotage after a while. But it didn’t matter because I had my eyes on the prize.”

  A look of utter disbelief suddenly overtook her. “Wait a minute, Donovan. You’re full of crap. You’re telling me your life turned out precisely the way you imagined it.”

  “Not precisely. Like you said, the future never turns out quite how you expect. In my case, I just got more than I wished for.”

  “More of what?”

  “Everything. I wanted to see new places and peoples. Instead, I’ve got an alien warship plugged into my skull, and now this war… The Earth’s lying in shambles, Legacy keeps telling me the fate of the galaxy is hanging in the balance, and I’m the only person in a position to do a damn thing about it. Can you imagine that? No one likes having responsibility dropped on their shoulders, and I’ll be frank with you… I’m the worst possible candidate for the job. I’m not a general, or even much of a leader really. I’m just an astronomer who likes to solve problems.”

  They were both silent in the wake of that revelation. Marcus hadn’t paid much attention to how he felt about it all. He’d just been along for the ride, doing whatever came naturally, and this was the first time he stopped to think about it. He wasn’t entirely pleased at what he found.

  They both looked out over the sleeping factory for a long while, until Marcus finally spoke again. “I know this isn’t the future any of us expected, Amira, but whether we like it or not, it’s the one we were dealt. The fate of our race is hanging in the balance, and we need all the hands we can get. Even the little ones.”

  She was still quiet. He decided it was time to leave, and let her make the right choice on her own. Before he left, he said one last thing. “We’ll all collapse if we don’t carry this weight together, and there won’t be anyone left to pick us up.”

  It was true: Marcus Donovan didn’t have a subtle bone in his body, but sometimes subtlety wouldn’t do.

  Chapter 27:

  Cellular

  With their training complete, the Bravos became a full-fledged combat cell with Jack in command. They kept their ERC jumpsuits, whose colors had faded to dull brown during their long months in the dirt, and they added desert-camo ponchos as further protection against the late summer sun.

  Charlie told them their first mission would be a warmup, requiring nothing more than basic competence. These types of missions were assigned to separate the wheat from the chaff. Successful cells moved on to greater challenges, while failures would either be drummed out of the organization, or simply swallowed up by the sands.

  Their assignment turned out to be just as simple as Charlie suggested. The Bravos were to head into the Gaza Strip to search for spare fuel cells, and conduct routine reconnaissance along the way. It was known territory with plenty of cover, and screwing it up would require real effort.

  The resistance always moved at night. During daylight, alien forces were everywhere, their cuttlefish flitting through the air and long-legged walkers stalking the land. But at night, the alien forces dwindled to scattered foot patrols, and mankind made their moves. The darkness became their last refuge and final domain.

  No one knew why the alien activity dropped off after sunset, but there rumors and theories flew around in abundance. Most claimed the alien vehicles were a combination of solar powered and cold blooded. Jack meanwhile found a good chuckle in thinking the invaders were afraid of the dark.

  Nikitin had his own theory, based on the pet bird he had as a kid. The bird was a parakeet named Mister Whistles, and whenever the sun was up, Mister Whistles would tweet and twitter non-stop. But if someone so much as dropped a blanket over his cage, he’d go silent as a whisper. Lights out birdy. Nikitin called it the “alien parakeet theory,” and Albright was an unexpected supporter, preferring the more sophisticated sounding “diurnal theory.”

  Whatever the reason, daytime was off-limits. The Bravos trundled out over rocky terrain in a military four-wheeler with Corpsman Andrew Chase at the wheel, and arrived before sun up. They hid their vehicle beneath a dirt-brown tarp on the outskirts of the farms, in the palm of a rock outcropping shaped like a hand thrusting out of the soil. The aliens weren’t known to be curious, but caution was rarely a mistake.

  Then the sun came up. The air turned hot and dry, but unlike Al Saif where the ground was a single shade of beige, the land near Gaza was fertile. Bountiful even. There was ample
farmland full of fresh but abandoned crops, separated by pockets of damaged-but-standing buildings, while a scorch mark that used to be a city loomed off toward the coast.

  The Bravos found one of the sturdier bombed-out and partially fallen buildings, and made camp for the day. Chunks had been taken out of it, but all three levels remained, and it made a good observation post, offering shady hiding spots and a bit of altitude in one crumbling package.

  Then the cuttlefish started to pass overhead. The air wasn’t filled with them, but they went by often enough to remove any thoughts of stepping outside. There were a few patches of cover out there, but only separated by long stretches of open terrain. Without anti-vehicle weapons, getting caught would equal a swift death. It was simple math.

  Jack busied himself studying maps of the area, trying to make some connection between the drawings and the wreckage all around, but he wasn’t having much luck. The maps were the old folding paper style, which had hardly been used in more than fifty years. They were relics from a time before global wireless and teraflop pocket computers, and these particular specimens were woefully out of date.

  Despite being awkward to fold and more wrong than right, Jack still kind of liked them. There was something tactile that was missing in the digital versions, and since he didn’t have anything else to do, trying to understand the maps made for an acceptable pass-time.

  The others found ways to occupy themselves as well. Albright inventoried her first aid kit and ammunition, and Nikitin kept watch through the scope of his marksman rifle. Chase was playing some incomprehensible card game with Nick McGrath, who preferred to be called Trash for some reason he wouldn’t explain. Rebecca Hartnell and Keith Cozar were staked out downstairs, where they could watch the northern corridor.

  Their hideout was silent for hours.

  “Hot damn, those things are fast,” Nikitin said sometime before noon. “Hey Jack, how fast do you think that’s going?”

  Jack looked up from his maps and out over the farms. On the horizon, one of the four-legged alien walkers was galloping by like some kind of monstrous Chernobyl gazelle. “I don’t know. How long do you reckon the legs are? Twenty meters?”