Stars Rain Down

by Chris J. Randolph

  “So you’re…”

  “Enhanced. A biotech construct. This is my third body, counting the one in which I was born.”

  “Okay. Now we come to the part of the story where something terrible happens.”

  “Yes. The Nefrem happened. Their battle fleet appeared in orbit one day and laid siege to our planet. Just like that, we were embroiled in war again. We thought we could defeat them, but their forces were too numerous. Too powerful. It took them only thirteen days to conquer our world, and our Archon chose to destroy it rather than concede defeat. He would not allow them to devour us.”

  “Devour you?”

  “That’s how the Nefrem operate. I’ll spare you the details.”

  “Thanks. So… how did you survive?”

  “I was placed in a bottle and set adrift on the sea of stars.”

  “And you ended up where?”

  “Other Sinits like me… infiltrators… they discovered which star systems the Nefrem were targeting, and the Archon’s dying wish was that I be sent to warn them.”

  “And?”

  “Five years later, my capsule arrived in the Oikeya system. The code be praised, Jack… You simply can’t imagine all the many strange wonders of that system. It was so rich and full of life. Three whole living worlds! Three, each with a completely unique ecosystem and collection of intelligent species. And that was only the beginning. Out among the asteroids were gargantuan membranous sacks full of water. Islands in space, each of them alive and intelligent, and full of yet more creatures. Life, free of the shackles of gravity. And all of it brought together, interconnected by living space ships that fly as naturally as a fish swims through water.”

  “Sounds too good to be true.”

  “I know. I thought the same thing every moment I was among them. I was sure I had died and gone to… heaven? The Oikeyans had no concept of war or hatred. No struggle or strife. They lived in peaceful harmony with one another, and they were all so very naive.” He was quiet for a long pause. “When I told them the destroyers were coming, they laughed. They actually laughed.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Everything I could. I preached to whoever would listen, and trained whoever would learn. I traveled the system for eight years trying to build some kind of defense, until the Nefrem advance fleet finally arrived. The Oikeyans greeted them with open arms and paid dearly for the mistake. Millions died before my forces were able to turn the fleet away.”

  “But they came back?”

  “Of course. The destroyers returned in numbers that made a mockery of their assault on my homeworld, and they brought their living planet this time. The war was over before it ever began.”

  “How many died?”

  “Forty billion, Jack. Slaughtered, eaten and churned out into more Nefrem. The sixty million refugees here on Earth… they are all that remains.”

  “But why come here, Kai? Why like this? You could’ve asked us for help.”

  Kai looked him dead in the eyes. “Because you are Nefrem.”

  “We look like them?”

  “No, Jack. You are them, and there can be no mistake in this. You’re genetically identical. We only learned of this world from them. The location of your system was cleverly hidden in their databanks. It was heavily encrypted and obscured behind falsified information, and I believed the secrecy was to prevent enemies from discovering the location of their homeworld.”

  “So you brought the Oikeyans here to strike back.”

  “Yes. We came prepared to wage the final battle. To tear out the weed at its root. The plan was to take the Nefrem by surprise and wipe out their civilization before they could mount a counter-offensive, and in that, we were fairly successful.”

  “Except we’re not the Nefrem,” Jack said while shaking his head. “This doesn’t make any sense. We’ve always been here. We evolved here, and until you arrived, we were pretty sure there wasn’t life out there at all. I mean, we’ve only just taken our first baby steps out onto other planets, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I know that now. In fact, your people survived precisely because you’re not the Nefrem. They live in hives the size of your largest cities. They have no farmland or suburbs. If you lived like that, you would have already been destroyed.”

  “I’m so glad this has been a learning experience for you, Kai. Really. I mean that.”

  “Sarcasm aside, the truth is that I can’t turn back time, and I can’t undo what I’ve done, but we still have a choice about who to become in the wake of this.”

  “Yeah, I know the guy who said that.”

  “I do too, and he’s an amazing creature. After everything that’s been done to him… everything he’s seen and been through, he still refuses to kill innocents. He could have destroyed the entire city in a flash of light, but he chose not to. I subjected him to more pain than any living thing could be expected to endure, and yet he spared my life.”

  “He must be a God damned idiot.”

  “Not at all. You’re a better man than even you realize, Jack Hernandez, and there’s something noble inside of you that I don’t understand. Something luminous that I couldn’t snuff out no matter how hard I tried. I will never cultivate a soul like yours, but I can become a weapon of your will, and perhaps atone for some of my mistakes.”

  “And if I prefer you dead?”

  “Then I’ll die. I deserve no less, and I know it… but I don’t think you’ll make that decision. You know that I can do more good alive than dead.”

  “We’ll see,” Jack said. “No offense, but this all seems a little too convenient. You’ll excuse me if I don’t lead you straight back to the resistance.”

  “I understand your apprehension, but I’ve no reason to deceive you. Your people have gotten sloppy in recent months. Your primary installations have already been located and dealt with, and all that remains are the fortified shelters… Arks, I believe you call them. The Oikeyans are mounting a final offensive as we speak, with the intent of finishing the fight once and for all. Humanity doesn’t have much time left.”

  They both sat there and listened to the falling rain. Then a motion in the distance caught Jack’s eye, and he struggled to focus. Months of captivity had left his vision less sharp than it once was, and with some effort, he made out a rhino and two jackrabbits moving down the hillside. His first instinct was panic. “We’ve got company!” he shouted and scrambled up from the ground.

  “Relax,” Kai said. “They’re friends.”

  “What?”

  “There are objectors among the Oikeyans that still believe life is sacred above all else. They want to end the war. When I informed them I was going to free you, these three volunteered to accompany us.”

  Every muscle in Jack’s body was rigid and his heart was racing. Kai might have spent months torturing Jack, but at least he looked human. The exterminators were a different story. They still had a profound effect on him, and the sight alone sent adrenaline surging through his blood.

  “Fuck me. Okay. I can handle this. Accompany us where exactly, Kai?”

  “Up to you.”

  “Figures,” Jack said. With that, he dropped back down and laid himself out in the ground cover. The rain fell harder every minute, and he was wet like a river. “For the time being, can I just lie here? I just want to lie here in the rain for a while.”

  “If that’s what you wish. Should I… go somewhere else?”

  Jack thought about it for a second and then said, “No. I may not like you, but you’re all I have. I’ve already had my share of solitude.”

  “As you wish.”

  Chapter 44:

  Dead Sea

  All told, fourteen months had passed since the beginning of the invasion, and Jack had spent four of them in captivity. Four months without sunshine. One hundred and eighteen days locked in a box, tortured and left to stew in his own despair while the world outside shambled on without him.

  Now he was free. His flyer sliced through
the air at more than two hundred kilometers an hour, racing northward over the vibrant green jungle.

  Jack and the strange vehicle were intimately connected, but at the same time separate in a way that baffled him. The feeling of sheer, unbridled speed reminded him of riding a motorcycle, but taken to an unimaginable extreme, while the play between mount and master was more like riding a horse. Not that he’d ever ridden a horse, but he’d heard stories.

  As they traveled, he was taken aback by how quickly nature had reclaimed her world. Jack had always heard that the Earth abides, but the swiftness of it disturbed him. The ashen cities were already grown over with fresh vegetation, and only the twisted metal spires hinted that anything had been there at all. Human civilization had been erased and forgotten. It left him feeling like civilization hadn’t been an integral part of the world, but had rather existed in spite of it. Mankind had been bailing water from a leaky ship, and in the absence of his attention, the tides rose up and swept it all away.

  Jack and his companions stopped every few hours so the flyer could rest and graze. It wasn’t like the larger cuttlefish in this regard, which were self-sufficient and capable of space travel. This flyer was a commuter, and the city was its natural habitat. It was less than ideal outside of the city, and its reliance on external energy made it essentially useless after nightfall.

  By the end of the first day, they reached the shores of the Red Sea where they camped for the night. Although Jack logically understood that the others could kill him at any time, the danger felt doubled once the sun went down. It bothered him so much that he hardly slept.

  When morning came, they returned to the air and quickly crossed the sea, and Jack was once again in the Mideast. Another seven hours after that, they arrived at the former site of Al Saif on the shores of the Dead Sea, and Jack confirmed what Kai had told him. Nothing remained of the base but a trash heap, the enemy having overrun the resistance more than a month before.

  After an exhaustive search, Jack found himself wandering the ruins, and he paced for a long time while imagining how the battle went down, piecing together what he could from the debris. The airstrip had been torn to shreds, and various parts of the temporary buildings littered the ground, but he didn’t see vehicle wreckage anywhere.

  “Satisfied?” Kai asked.

  “Not quite the right word, but yeah…”

  He tried to reconcile what he remembered of the base’s layout with the destruction all around him, in hopes of discovering a hidden weapons cache somewhere. It was a more difficult task than he might have gussed.

  Kai had a frustrated look on his face. He was restless, but he held his tongue.

  “I bet you’re wondering what we’re doing here,” Jack said.

  “The question crossed my mind.”

  “Trying to figure out if you’re telling the truth about… well, anything. Seems you are.”

  “The world is full of surprises, no?”

  Jack smiled in spite of himself. “Now, there’s good news and bad news in this slag pile. The good news is that the resistance saw the attack coming, and evacuated before you all got here.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Trucks, planes. This place was rotten with ‘em, but there’s no sign of any here. The only explanation is that they got the hell out of dodge before the fireworks started.”

  “Where’d they get the information”

  “Ancient Chinese secret. I’ll never tell.”

  “Fair answer. And the bad news?”

  “Since they had time to pack up and leave, I’m betting they took most of their supplies with ‘em. I was hoping to pick up a little extra firepower, but there’s nothing but rubbish here.”

  Kai looked at him like he was absolutely mad. “Maybe I wasn’t clear, Jack. There’s a legion marching toward the Ark right now. Armor, siege weapons and more than a million ground troops. We can’t fight them on our own.”

  “I know,” Jack said, “but I like to keep my options open. You can solve a lot of problems with a honking big pile of explosives.”

  Looking at the remains of Al Saif didn’t exactly fill him with confidence. It looked like a hurricane had hit the base. An angry hurricane that was on fire, and full of lawnmower blades.

  Off on the other side of the ruins, the rhino waved and shouted something. His deep voice carried a surprising distance over open ground. Kai cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted something back in a language Jack was beginning to recognize if not understand.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He asked if you were done moping around yet.”

  “And?”

  “I told him you’d be done soon. Don’t make a liar of me, Jack.”

  He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be angry at that. “We’ll hit the road in a bit. Riddle me this though, Mr. Space Ninja… what the hell am I supposed to do?”

  “If I knew that, I’d have done it already. Don’t worry. You’re a resourceful guy. You’ll think of something.”

  Jack shook his head. “You either have too much faith, or a really strange sense of humor.”

  The alien picked up a piece of ruined metal and spun it around in his hand, trying to determine its original purpose. After a moment of fruitless head scratching, he cocked his arm back and threw it far into the distance.

  It occurred to Jack that the hunk of metal must have weighed more than twenty kilos, yet Kai handled it like a baseball.

  “They could have at least left me a bottle of hooch,” Jack said after a while.

  “Hooch?”

  “Booze. Alcohol. Fermentation of fruit or grain, ingested to produce intoxication.”

  “You had me at alcohol.”

  “Ah.”

  Jack took one last look at the wreckage all around, shook his head and said, “That’s enough. Let’s get out of here.” Then he turned and started off toward the flyer.

  Kai followed. “Where to?”

  “I want to see this alien legion. You know where they’ll be?”

  “Give or take. About two days ride at our current rate.”

  “Would they pay any attention to one of their own flyers buzzing them?”

  “Probably not, as long as you don’t act too suspicious.”

  “Good. I’m gonna prep the flyer. Go get the others.”

  “Will do,” Kai said, and then he got a funny look on his face. “By the way… ummm… what’s a ninja?”

  Jack laughed. “They were assassins who excelled at sneaking into enemy castles and eliminating targets unseen. The movies got carried away, and portrayed them as unstoppable killing machines with mystical abilities. It’s kind of silly.”

  “I learn something new every day,” Kai said with a smile. Then he turned and ran off at a speed that’d make an Italian sports car blush. It took Jack the entire walk back to the flyer to convince himself what he saw was real, and not just some fanciful hallucination.

  Chapter 45:

  Millipede

  Jack and his four alien companions traveled north, from the dusty beige of the Mideast to the green hills and roiling mountains of Eastern Turkey. Jack had never seen the Turkish landscape before, and the mountains there spiked out of the ground defiantly as if the Earth itself were invading the sky. The intensity of the steep mountains and gorges took his breath away, and he badly wanted to stop and explore.

  There wasn’t any time for that, though, and they flew on. Turkey gave way to green Georgia, followed by the Caucasus Mountains, a line of snow capped peaks which stood in a row like jagged teeth. On the other side, they found themselves in the remains of Russia, whose abandoned farmland stretched out in all directions like a patchwork quilt, so large that Jack thought he’d never see the end of it.

  The colder climate and high altitudes slowed their progress, but they finally caught up with the Oikeyan legion after nearly three days of travel. The legion wasn’t difficult to find, like a insanely large herd of buffalo lumbering across the land, stretching more tha
n fifty kilometers from beginning to end. It was populated by strange creatures, some as large as container ships, and attended by swarms of flyers darting from one part of the pack to the next, like flocks of birds before a storm. The multitude of stomping feet kicked up a dust cloud that billowed out toward the horizon and covered the ground in a dense and impenetrable haze.

  Jack, joined to the flyer he named Felix, approached the herd cautiously from behind, nipping at their heels. “Holy crap,” his disembodied voice said once he was close enough to really appreciate the scale of it.

  A rumble filled the air like endless thunder.

  “You see,” Kai said, “we can’t fight this. Even the Nefrem would have trouble standing before this kind of force.”

  Jack and Felix surged forward, weaving into and through the formation. He flew up alongside one of the great grey walkers, and marveled at the locomotive-sized cannon mounted atop it. He imagined a weapon that big could crack a mountain in two.

  “We could talk to them, maybe convince them to stop.”

  “Come on, Jack… do they look like they’re in a talking mood?” Kai shouted over the roar.

  “There’s gotta be someone in charge who could put a stop to this. Some leadership.”

  “There is,” Kai said, “The ones you call pilots are in control. The Alarhya. But they won’t listen to anyone anymore.”

  “What changed?”

  “Your tactics. Your kind left Yuon Kwon mangled and broken in the field, and that infuriated the Alarhya. They consider the vehicles sacred. When the suicide bombings began, it was the final straw.”

  “Suicide bombings! What suicide bombings?”

  “It started after your capture. Generators were too difficult to reach, so the terrorists went after population centers. Markets, parks and the like. I don’t blame your people, but you see how these things escalate?”

  Jack peeled away from the walker and continued on through the herd, sliding between a pair of smaller creatures and then under the long legs of another massive walking cannon. His skills in darting through traffic had been honed to a razor’s edge through years of navigating highway 101 at rush hour, and the comparatively sparse and evenly spaced vehicles in the Oikeyan herd posed little challenge.