A hybrid, Marco realized. Half gray, half human.
Smiling, the hybrid spoke. "The most precious jewels you'll ever have around your neck are the arms of your children."
Marco and Addy opened fire.
The bolts slammed into the hybrid and bounced off, doing her no harm. She kept advancing, her smile growing. Marco and Addy kept firing, and the necklace of baby arms burned, but the hybrid only grinned, the electrical bolts bouncing off her skin.
"Ring around the rosie," the hybrid sang, stepping over corpses, moving closer. "A pocket full of posies . . ." Mockery dripped from her voice. "Ashes, ashes!" Her song became louder, high-pitched like steam, and her eyes blazed with delight. "They all fall down!"
She raised her arms, and energy blasted out from the palms. Shock waves slammed into Marco and Addy, tossing them across the room. They slammed into the wall and slumped down.
The hybrid laughed, voice impossibly loud and shrill.
"I know who you are." She stepped closer, crushing the heads of dead babies beneath her feet. "Marco Emery. Addy Linden." She sneered. "My grandmother, the Goddess Nefitis, will be happy to see you."
Marco managed to rise to his knees. It felt as if every bone inside him had shattered. He raised his gun again, aimed at an eye. The hybrid pointed at him, and another shock wave blasted out, knocking him back. Marco screamed as his arm dislocated. His gun clattered onto the floor.
Addy screamed and leaped toward the hybrid, only for a blast to toss her back, to shatter what remained of her armor. She fell to the floor, moaning. When Addy tried to rise again, the hybrid swung her arm. A pillar tore free and crashed onto Addy, pinning her down.
Marco tried to crawl toward Addy. But the hybrid grinned, curled her fingers inward, and an invisible force raised Marco from the floor. He hovered, kicking, a foot above the floor. The hybrid held him in an astral grip. She stepped closer, curled her fingers tighter, and invisible fingers seemed to tighten around Marco's neck. He gasped for air. The tendons in his neck creaked. He clawed at the ghostly fingers, feeling nothing. He kicked wildly, trying to break the spell, but hung in the air.
The hybrid tilted her head.
"So frail," she whispered. "So . . . small. I imagined a great warrior. The famous Marco Emery, alien killer. I see only a child."
She stepped closer. She placed one hand around his throat, keeping him elevated, and stroked his hair with her other hand. Her claws scraped his scalp. Marco tried to speak, could not. No air reached his lungs.
"What's that? You want to speak?" The hybrid pouted. "I like you silent. At least until it's time for you to scream. I think I will make you my mate." She licked Marco's cheek, her bristly tongue rising from his chin to his forehead. She purred. "You are delicious. I will enjoy you. You ruined my necklace. The arms of our children will form a new one."
A thud sounded behind. The room shook. The hybrid spun around, dropping Marco to the floor. He gasped for air.
"Linden!" the hybrid screeched.
Addy had pushed off the pillar, cracking it on the floor. She limped toward the hybrid, bloodied.
"Hands off him, you hybrid bitch," Addy said. "He's mine!"
As the hybrid screamed and raced toward her, Addy reached into her backpack. She pulled out something pale and wet, unfurled it like a napkin, and tossed it.
A slimy sheet wrapped around the hybrid's head, covering her face.
No—not a sheet! One of the fish from Taolin Shi! The same one that had wrapped around Addy!
George, Marco remembered. Its name is George.
He rose to his feet, coughing, swaying. Stars hovered before his vision. The hybrid queen shrieked, spinning around, desperate to rip off the fish. Marco ran toward her. He grabbed an electrical gun from the floor. He fired a bolt at the aquatic alien.
The creature burst into flame.
The hybrid shrieked.
The flat fish clung to her, wrapped around her head, blazing. The fire spread. Howling, the hybrid finally tore it off. Her skin ripped off with it. Her head was burning. She screamed. Her flesh was melting.
Addy fired her own gun. Marco fired too. Their bolts slammed into the hybrid's ravaged skull, stoking the fire. The inferno spread across the rest of the hybrid, melting skin and muscle, revealing the bones. Yet still the creature stood, cackling.
"You cannot stop her!" rose a demonic voice from the blaze. "You cannot stop Nefitis!" The voice became so high-pitched that Marco covered his ears, but still the sound pierced him. "She is coming for you! Nefitis is coming with all her hosts! How you will scream!"
Marco and Addy fired again, hitting what remained of the hybrid's head. Her skull shattered, and finally the creature fell down dead.
For a moment Marco and Addy just breathed. Every breath sawed at Marco's throat, and every breath was wonderful.
Finally he looked up at Addy. "You smuggled George out of Taolin Shi."
"I couldn't just leave him behind." Addy looked at the burnt fish. "And now you burned him into a Filet-O-Fish. Poor, poor George."
Marco sighed. He swayed. Addy limped toward him, and they embraced.
"You all right, Addy?" he whispered.
She nodded, holding him. "Bruised as fuck, but I'm fine. Had worse in hockey fights. You?"
He nodded. "Bruised as fuck." He touched her cheek. "You saved my life, Ads. Again."
She wiped away her tears and grinned. "I had to. That bitch was going to steal you from me. I couldn't allow that. You're my cute little poet."
He kissed her cheek. "I love you so fucking much, Addy. You know that, right?"
Her smile widened. "I know. Because I keep saving your ass. It belongs to me, after all." She looked back at George. "I just wish we could have saved my pet too." She sniffed. "You know, he kind of smells like fried fish. You hungry?"
"Addy!" Marco stepped away from her. "You're not suggesting we eat George, your beloved pet!"
"But I'm hungry!"
He groaned. "There's food back at the mecha."
"But that's far! I'm hungry now."
Marco rolled his eyes. "Addy."
She sighed. "Fine!"
No more grays lived in the colony. Marco and Addy moved room by room, finding more atrocities. Women with their legs sawed off, bellies swelling. The corpses of men, mutilated. Hybrid babies, hissing, revealing needlelike teeth. They collected the survivors. They burned the dead.
Marco knew that Earth still stood; he had picked up signals from the planet on his way into the solar system. Here was a taste of Earth's fate should the grays conquer it. Here was what humanity would become should the grays win—tortured, mutilated, the men murdered, the women used for breeding.
We will not let this happen to Earth, he vowed. With Kaiyo and Kaji, we will defend our world.
They loaded their mechas with survivors, filling the lounge areas, the corridors, the storerooms, even the elevator. Dented and charred from the battle, Kaiyo and Kaji flew again. They left Titan behind. They flew onward to Earth.
As Marco piloted his mecha, as Earth grew ahead, the hybrid's warning kept echoing in his mind.
Nefitis is coming! How you will scream!
CHAPTER TWO
The Lodestar flew into the depths of space, exploring darkness that no human ship had ever lit.
Captain Einav Ben-Ari stood on the bridge, clad in the navy-blue uniform of HOPE, gazing at the stars. HOPE—the Human Outreach Program of Exploration—was Earth's premier scientific and diplomatic agency, and the Lodestar was its flagship. The bridge was shaped like a planetarium, its dome covered with screens, affording a view of the stars all around them, along with holographic stats and diagrams. Even the floor was covered with viewports, showing the stars beneath the ship. The bridge was actually deep inside the starship, protected behind thick bulkheads, and the views came from cameras mounted on the hull. But standing here, Ben-Ari felt as if she and her crew floated in space.
We are traveling to new stars, she thought. To seek t
he great Galactic Alliance of Civilizations. To seek help. To seek hope. To light the darkness.
"We were wanderers from the beginning," Ben-Ari whispered, gazing at the stars. "The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood."
Professor Noah Isaac approached her. He smiled softly. "Carl Sagan. Pale Blue Dot, 1994."
Ben-Ari nodded. "You know your Sagan, Professor."
The professor gazed at the stars and spoke softly. "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas . . ."
Ben-Ari smiled. "Herman Melville. Moby Dick, 1871."
"1851," the professor corrected her.
Ben-Ari's smile widened. "I must have been thinking of the sequel."
My dear professor, she thought. He made this darkness, this loneliness bearable. He was forty-six, fifteen years her senior, and when she had first come aboard this ship, feeling so overwhelmed to command it, he had been a father figure—guiding, teaching, comforting her. Yet over the past year aboard the Lodestar, the professor had become something different to her. Something even more meaningful. As she smiled at him, she remembered how they had embraced, how they had shared a kiss. And the budding feelings of love warmed her.
I've never loved a man, she thought. She had always been too busy with the tragedies of life. She had grown up a military brat, the daughter of a famous colonel, the granddaughter of a general, moving from base to base, rebelling, running away again and again, a girl with no mother and no friends other than gruff sergeants and stray dogs. She had been only a teenager when she joined Officer Candidate School, graduating as an officer at twenty. And since then? Eleven years of war. Of leading troops in battle. Of facing death every day, of seeing terrors that still haunted her most nights.
I fought the scum in their tunnels, she thought. I faced the horror of the marauders in the depth of space. I fought the grays upon the burning fields of Earth. Romance? Who the hell had time?
And so she had grown from rebellious daughter to military officer and now this—the captain of a ship, only thirty-one, a woman with the fate of humanity on her shoulders. A heroine. Her face famous across the world—the legendary Einav Ben-Ari who had led the platoon that killed the scum emperor and the lord of marauders. A woman tasked with saving humanity a third time. A woman who was scared, who found the burden nearly unbearable.
And a woman in love. A woman who had found a man she could finally open her heart to.
"My dear professor." She took his warm hand in hers. "Still you teach me things."
He gazed at her softly. He did not recoil at her touch. Only one of her hands was real, of course. The other was cold metal. She had lost that hand, along with the arm, while battling the grays in Mongolia. Her new prosthetic was slick and silvery and loaded with tricks: it could project a holographic monitor, connect to the internet, and hide objects in a hidden chamber. Some of the crew members would furtively glance at it. Sometimes Ben-Ari felt self-conscious, no longer fully human, some cyborg warrior. But the professor never stared at her prosthetic, never saw her as anything less or more. She loved him for it.
"Well, don't you two dags have dinkum banter." Fish came strolling toward them, his grin as toothy as his crocodile-tooth necklace. "Seeing you two crack onto each other makes me happy as a dingo in a nursery. Just don't pash here on the bridge."
Ben-Ari could still barely understand what the Australian exobiologist, the famous Richie "Fish" Fishburne, was saying half the time. She stared at his khaki shorts in distaste.
"I told you to put on your uniform, Fish," she said. "This is the flagship of Earth, tasked with representing humanity to the Galactic Alliance of Civilizations, not the set of Alien Hunter."
Fish's eyes widened in his tanned face. "You say that like Alien Hunter was shonky chunder! I'll have you know it was true blue telly, top of the ratings three years in a row." He gestured down at his khaki shorts and shirt. "And I wore this every episode, even the ones where I wrestled Orionite slime-devils."
Out of morbid curiosity, Ben-Ari had streamed an Alien Hunter episode on her prosthetic arm's monitor. She had seen Fish trekking across alien planets, finding exotic alien animals, and wrestling them into submission. The man was supposedly a scientist, but he was more of a celebrity.
Just the sort of man who could convince the taxpayer to fund the Lodestar. Just the sort of man who made Ben-Ari's job all the more difficult.
She pointed at the elevator. "Go. Off my bridge. Come back with a uniform. And damn it, cut that ridiculous long hair of yours."
His eyes widened. "These beautiful golden locks? Sheila, these locks are what will impress the aliens and let us join their alliance!"
She kept pointing. "Go!"
Muttering that his captain had a few kangaroos loose in the paddock, Fish trudged off the bridge.
Ben-Ari turned toward the professor and sighed. "That was the man in charge of introducing us to aliens."
"Fish isn't that bad," the professor said.
"Noah, when we encounter the elders of the Galactic Alliance, Fish is likely to leap onto them and wrestle them."
The professor patted her hand. "Don't worry, Einav. I'll keep an eye on Fish and make sure he behaves. And it'll be you who introduces us to the elders."
Ben-Ari winced. "That's not comforting. I tend to stumble around my tongue. Fish wrestling them to submission might be more diplomatic."
The professor raised his eyebrows. "Stumble around your tongue? You're an eloquent speaker, Einav."
She smiled wearily. "I know how to deliver speeches to soldiers before a battle. I know how to quote old literature. What do I know of diplomacy? My father was the diplomat. I'm just a soldier."
"You are far more than just a soldier, Einav." Holding her hand, the professor turned to gaze at the stars. "You are an explorer. You are an envoy of humanity. You are—we all are on this ship, perhaps more than anything—dreamers. You are wise, Einav Ben-Ari, and you are strong, and you are eloquent, and mostly you are kind. I can think of no one better to represent our species."
"You," she said.
Isaac smiled at her. "And I'm with you. Always."
She inhaled deeply. He comforted her, yes, but still the fear lingered deep within her. The fate of humanity rested on her shoulders. They had to fly through uncharted space, a darkness full of danger. They had to reach the headquarters of the Galactic Alliance, an organization uniting many of the Milky Way galaxy's mightiest civilizations. She had to convince them that Earth—humble Earth, a lone planet with only a handful of ships and a smattering of colonies—was worthy of membership. If Earth could join the Galactic Alliance, humanity would fall under its umbrella of protection. The Alliance's fleets would defend Earth from the grays.
Yet what chance do we have? Ben-Ari thought, gazing at the distant stars. The civilizations of the Galactic Alliance are mighty. Some of them span hundreds of star systems. They command great fleets. They possess technology humans cannot even comprehend. They would see us as savages, mere apes taking our first steps into the cosmic ocean.
She sighed. Yet it was Earth's only hope. The scum, then the marauders, then the grays had destroyed humanity's fleets. Only a handful of human starships remained. They needed the protection of the Alliance . . . or the next time the grays attacked, they would crush humanity.
"You've taken two shifts on the bridge," the professor said. "Would you like to rest, Einav? I'd be happy to take a command shift."
"I'm tired," she confessed. "But I'd like to remain on the bridge for a while. To reflect. To gaze at the stars. I find it soothing here."
The professor smiled. "You find captaining a starship at wartime soothing?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You're the one who relaxes by reading scientific papers."
"Touche."
And so she remained on the bridge. She gazed out at the stars. An explorer. A leader. A woman with a billion humans behind her, with the hopes of humanity ahead.
No human ship has ever flown this far, she thought, gazing at the distant lights. What will I find here? Aid or death?
As she gazed into the distance, she frowned. She tilted her head. A few of the stars were vanishing, reappearing, flickering away. A bad pixel on the monitor? No. A shape. Something . . .
Ben-Ari reached out, activating the holographic interface for one of the displays. She zoomed in.
Her frown deepened.
An object was floating ahead. Square. Black.
She zoomed in closer.
"Professor, are you seeing this?"
He stared with her. "Hmm." He scratched his chin.
"Hmm indeed," said Ben-Ari. "It looks like . . ."
"Like a wall," said the professor.
Ben-Ari turned toward Lieutenant Connor Smith, one of her bridge officers, a young man with a brown beard and a bionic eye. Sometimes he joked that he and Ben-Ari should become pirates—after all, he was missing an eye, she was missing an arm, and they already had a ship. His twin brother served on the bridge too, sporting the same beard. The only way Ben-Ari could tell the Smith Bros apart was by the bionic eye.
"Connor," she said to him. She always referred to the twins by their first names to avoid confusion. "What are the dimensions of this object?"
The one-eyed lieutenant manipulated holographic displays. He looked at her. "Half a kilometer wide, half a kilometer tall, according to my estimates. I'd have to send out a probe to estimate the width."
She shook her head. "No. Save our probes."
She kept staring. A wall in space. Just floating ahead. Facing them. Was it an alien starship? It wasn't moving. She saw no portholes, no exhaust pipes. Just a smooth dark facade.
"The object is emitting no signals," said the professor, working at the science station. "It seems to be made of stone."
"Stone?" Ben-Ari said. "Not metal?"
"Stone, Captain," the professor said. "It's bizarre. But we seem to be facing a stone wall in space. And it's directly ahead of us, blocking our present course."
Earth Eternal (Earthrise Book 9) Page 3
