There had been beauty even in Haven, he remembered. There had been beauty to the clouds, to the shining towers in the city core. Here there was nothing but ugliness. Nothing but despair. Kilometer after kilometer of it: black stones, filthy water, wafting smog, desolate hills, hissing snakes. The world had ended. Here was its corpse.
Addy pointed. "Poet, look!"
They stared across the landscape. On a distant hill burned several fires.
"Campfires," Addy said.
Marco shook his head. "Just more oil pits. We've been seeing them all over."
"I see a wall. No, a fence." She pulled out her binoculars and stared. "A village, Poet! Maybe they'll have clean water. We can storm the place, kill the grays, take their water."
Marco took the binoculars from her. He stared. A rusty fence. A handful of fires. He saw no more.
"We'll check it out," he said. "But no wasting bullets. Knives only unless our lives depend on it."
They began walking toward the village. It was desperation that drove them. They dared not drink the foul water anymore. They needed fresh water, needed food, needed more weapons if they could find them. Hopefully a map too. They walked, knives drawn.
Atop the hill, they realized their error. It was not a fence they had seen but a palisade of rusty metal poles. Skulls topped the poles—the huge skulls of grays, the eye sockets massive, the jaws lined with teeth like needles. One skull was still draped with rotting flesh.
Marco and Addy glanced at each other. Knives drawn, they stepped between two poles.
They counted five campfires. There was little else here. No huts, no wells, not even a tent. Four of the campfires were unattended. A group of pale, naked humanoids hunched around the fifth campfire, roasting a large animal. Their backs were turned to Marco and Addy. The creatures had prominent spine ridges, wrinkly white skin, and heads coated with scraggly gray hair. Their ribs were massive, flaring out to twice a human's width, but their limbs were rail thin, their bellies gaunt, their necks gangly.
The creatures took the animal off the fire and began tearing into it, ripping off shreds of pale meat. Then Marco realized what they were eating: it was one of their own.
"Cannibals!" Addy whispered.
The creatures froze. Their ears cocked. They spun toward Marco and Addy.
Their faces were hideously deformed. Boils covered them. White hairs filled their nostrils, acting as natural filters against the smog. Their jaws opened wide, revealing fangs. Their eyes blazed, white and cruel.
They were not grays. And yet they were humanoid. Not alien. Too similar to humans to be aliens.
"They're—" Marco began.
He could not finish his sentence. The creatures grabbed spears and charged toward them.
"Fuck knives!" Addy grabbed one of the poles, yanked it from the ground, and shook off the skull.
The creatures reached them.
Spears lashed.
Marco cried out and leaped back. One of the creatures' spears scraped his side, denting his armored spacesuit. These things were strong. He lashed his knife, hit the creature's skin, but it was like trying to cut hard plastic. The creature leaped onto him, screeching, eyes wide and bloodshot. It knocked Marco down, then raised his spear.
Marco rolled. The spear slammed into the earth beside him, cracking stones. Marco leaped up and jabbed his knife upward, hitting the creature under the chin. He drove his blade deep, piercing the beast's mouth, then pulled back, yanking the jawbone clean off. Blood gushed.
Marco had no time to finish the kill. Two more creatures leaped onto him. Addy was busy fighting three others. Marco lashed his knife and took a spear to the leg. He yowled. He tossed his blade, hit a creature's throat, then knelt and grabbed a fallen spear.
Fuck knives indeed.
He leaped forward, thrusting his spear. He had never fought with a spear before, but Ben-Ari had drilled them relentlessly with bayonets. Marco used the same moves here. He thrust the blade into a creature's stomach, making it double over. Then he swung the spear's shaft upward, knocking the shaft into his enemy's chin. The creature's head whipped backward, neck snapping.
The rest of the creatures fell quickly. They were wretched, sickly things, physically strong but unhealthy. They were easier to kill than grays. Soon Marco and Addy stood over their corpses.
Addy spat and wiped her hands on her pants. "What the fuck are those things? Not grays. Their heads are too small."
Marco stared down at the corpses. He spoke softly. "They're human."
Addy raised an eyebrow. "The fuck they are. They look like Gollum."
They gazed at the wide ribs, the nostrils filled with thick hair, the long and thin limbs, the claws.
"The grays used to be human too," Marco said. "They spent a million years on Isfet, evolving there into the grays, finally returning to Earth. When they came here, they found a ruined world. But not a lifeless world. A few humans had survived the apocalypse, had evolved to survive in a polluted world. Look at them, Addy. Their nostrils and lungs are designed for the bad air. Their claws are made for climbing and digging. The rest of them is human. Like us. They're just another branch in human evolution."
Addy shuddered. "I don't want us turning into these creatures."
"We won't," Marco said. "Not if we can save Earth. If we can get back home and warn people, if we can stop the pollution that ravaged this place, that derailed these creatures' evolution."
Addy shuddered. "Fuck that shit. Not our job, Poet. Our job is to kill Tic-Tac-Toe. Our friends back home will have to figure out how to save the baby whales. Lailani and Ben-Ari both saw visions of this place. Even if we don't make it back, they'll know what to do. Our mission is to find that pyramid and kill the sicko inside."
They spent a few moments exploring the campsite. They found a tunnel that led underground. They entered, knifes held before them, and found a burrow where the creatures must have lived. There were no guns, no advanced technology at all, but they found crude blades, pots, and pans. There was lots of rancid, maggoty meat—nothing they dared eat. There was water in urns, but it was the same gray filth. They boiled the water in a pot, strained it through cloth, boiled it again, and finally drank. It tasted like slow death.
"Not a sausage to be found," Addy said on their last sweep of the camp. She glanced at one of the pale corpses and shuddered. "Fuck, I preferred this world when no humans lived on it. This makes things even worse."
"I agree," Marco said. "But hey, look here. Something useful."
It was clutched in a corpse's clawed hand—a scroll made of skin. Marco wasn't sure if the skin was from an animal or humanoid. He didn't want to know. A map was drawn onto the parchment.
Addy's eyes widened. "A map to Gehenna!"
"So it would seem," Marco said.
The map showed hills, mountains, rivers, and a dotted line leading toward a city. In the center of the city, the mapmaker had drawn a pyramid with an eye on its crest.
Addy tapped the pyramid. "Tick. Tack. Toe."
They hated the idea of sleeping in this camp. But the creatures had dug a dry burrow, and it was storming again, and wolves howled in the wind. They tossed the maggoty meat outside—the smell was too awful to tolerate. Finally they huddled up in a dry corner of the burrow, a warm and safe place for the night. For the first time in days, they peeled off their spacesuits. Their bodies were bruised and pale. Marco felt as if he were already evolving into one of those twisted creatures.
"You look like shit, Poet," Addy said, concern in her eyes. "You're too pale and too thin."
Marco looked at her. He touched her hair. She too was pale. Her eyes were sunken.
"And you're beautiful," he whispered.
Tears filled her eyes. She hugged him. She cried softly.
"It's horrible," she whispered. "This place. This world. What became of Earth. Of humans. Of us. I'm scared, Marco. I'm scared we'll fail. That we'll die here. That we can't stop this."
He stroked her hair. "I'm sc
ared too. But we're still breathing. We're still fighting. So long as we have each other, we have hope."
She nodded and wiped her eyes. She laughed softly. "I got snot on your shoulder."
He grimaced. "Eww! Addy, gross!"
She laughed and wiped her nose. "I'm sorry!"
Her laughter grew louder. She doubled over, laughing and crying, and soon Marco was laughing too, tears in his eyes.
When their laughter faded, they lay down in the corner, holding each other close, face-to-face.
"We survived the scum," Marco said, looking into her eyes. "We were only kids, and we survived them together. We survived the marauders. And we'll survive this. That's what we do. We're survivors."
She nodded. "Survivors," she whispered. "Addy and Marco, heroes of the universe."
He caressed her hair as thunder boomed and wind shrieked outside, as creatures yowled and roared.
"Pretend we're back at the cove," Marco whispered.
"Shipwreck Cove," Addy whispered, holding him close.
"Our secret place," Marco said. "Imagine that we're there. That we can hear the water whispering over the sand. That the moonlight is shining on the seashells, the sea, the white cliffs."
"The shipwreck full of treasure," Addy whispered. "I can imagine it. It's so beautiful, Marco. I never forgot that place." A tear flowed down her cheek. "Maybe we'll never see it again. But I still remember. It's our place. We're there now. Not in this burrow. We're there at Shipwreck Cove."
She closed her eyes. The wolves howled louder outside. The thunder boomed and the burrow shook. They slept fitfully until dawn, holding each other the whole night through.
In the cold, wet, rainy morning, they stepped outside. The campfires had died. The corpse of the cooked humanoid had fallen off the spit; it lay on the ground, rotten, filled with worms. Addy and Marco hefted their weapons and packs and headed out, following the map. Ahead of them, the desolation still spread into the horizon, leading past mountains, canyons, and poisonous rivers toward the pyramid. Toward the Oracle. Toward the faintest hope in a world of despair.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ben-Ari stood on the observation deck of the Lodestar, gazing at Earth.
She was orbiting five hundred kilometers above the surface. From up here, the damage from the long galactic wars was barely noticeable. It still looked like good old Earth, the home that she loved. Forests rolled across the northern wilderness. Deserts sprawled across the Middle East. Lakes and rivers shimmered. When she passed into night, the cities lit the darkness, fragile and beautiful.
Ben-Ari had no single hometown. As a child, her father had fled the destruction of Jerusalem. She had been born in exile. She had grown up on military bases, never staying long in one place. She had only one home: Earth, the entire planet.
As an officer, she had traveled across the galaxy, visited many worlds, flown by countless stars, yet there was no planet in the cosmos so precious, so beautiful. Earth, she knew, was but a speck of dust in the infinite emptiness, barely visible in the galaxy. Yet here, on this fragile marble, was all that Ben-Ari loved.
She raised her eyes, and she gazed at the fleet orbiting the planet with her.
Ten thousand starships flew around Earth.
Most were U-wings, small starfighters shaped like horseshoes. Ben-Ari had disabled the AI systems they had come with, installed by the Galactic Alliance. Instead, human pilots now flew the starfighters. Ten heavy warships flew here too, each larger than the Lodestar. They were long and rectangular, built of silvery steel coated with graphene, and cannons lined their sides. Turrets rose atop them. If the Lodestar was shaped like a sailing vessel of Old Earth, these alien warships reminded her of the great aircraft carriers of the twentieth century. Aboard them now flew a mix of robotic technicians—they had come with the ships—and human commanders.
This army had cost a fortune. It cost so much that every human on Earth would spend their rest of their lives paying for it. But if this army could save the precious blue marble, it would be worth it.
Yet can we truly save the world? Ben-Ari thought.
Their scientists reported massive ripples in spacetime. Something big was coming. An army that could dwarf the last invasion of the grays, the one in which she had fought Abyzou. She remembered the visions Lailani had reported: a host of saucers covering the sky, an army of countless grays, a host to destroy worlds.
Earth had ten thousand ships. It had fifty thousand robotic troops. It had what remained of the HDF's ground forces. It was a sizable force, and these ships were state-of-the-art, more advanced than anything human engineers had ever built. Against the scum and marauders, it might have been enough. Yet when the grays swarmed, when hundreds of thousands of saucers filled the sky, when millions of gray soldiers stormed the world—how long could Earth resist?
Ben-Ari gazed out across the stars.
"Be strong, Marco and Addy," she whispered. "I need you to be stronger than ever." She lowered her head. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry we sent you there. To die so far from home."
Footsteps sounded behind her. Petty came to stand by her at the viewport. They gazed out at space together. For a long time, they were silent.
Finally the grizzled president spoke.
"You could have told her." His voice was raspier than ever. "You could have told Captain de la Rosa that I kept you in the dark too. That you were as shocked as she was."
"And what good would that have done?" Ben-Ari said. "She is a captain in the Human Defense Force, a junior officer. You and I are leaders of humanity. As far as Lailani is concerned, we are united in our knowledge, our decisions, our moral convictions. Let her believe that. Let her believe it had to be done."
Petty turned to look at her. His face was like a slab of rock—it had always been stony—but there was new weariness there, new wrinkles, new white hairs.
"And do you believe that, Einav?" he said.
She gazed into his dark eyes. She spoke carefully. "I believe that Marco and Addy are my friends. My best friends. That I love them deeply. That my heart is broken. That I am filled with more pain than you can imagine. I am in mourning. I cannot comprehend a world that is saved without them here." She raised her chin. "And I believe that they will find a way home. I don't know how. But I know them, James. If there's a way back, Marco and Addy will find it."
"But only if they first succeed at their mission," Petty said. "If they can kill that goddamn monstrosity inside the pyramid." He looked back out into space. "God, the horrors out there . . . The monsters we find in the shadows . . ."
"These are the monsters inside us," Ben-Ari said softly. "Perhaps they were always there."
And perhaps there are monsters inside Petty, she thought. Inside me. We sent our friends to death.
She had learned as an officer to sacrifice the few to save the many. Every commander at war had to learn this bitter lesson. And during her fourteen years in the military, she had sacrificed soldiers. Friends. Had watched too many die. Her dear Sergeant Singh, a mentor to her. Most of her platoon in the mines of Corpus. Dozens of her soldiers in the hives of Abaddon. Yes, many times, she had sacrificed the few to save the many. But it had never hurt so much.
And she knew why Petty had lied to her. Why he hadn't told her the hourglass had only enough sand for a one-way trip, that their engineers didn't know how to manufacture more of the sand, that Addy and Marco could never come home.
Because he knew, she thought. He knew that I would have said no. That I would have sent other soldiers—soldiers not as qualified, not as experienced. He knew that I would have jeopardized the mission. And he's right. Not even for the world could I have done it.
"I'm heading back to the surface," Petty said. "I'll be commanding the hosts from the bunkers beneath Jerusalem. I want you to spend the next day resting."
"Mister President, we have more war games to play. More drills to run. More—"
"When's the last time you slept, Einav?" When she couldn't answer, he nodded
. "Rest."
She nodded. "Yes, sir."
He turned to leave, then turned back.
"Einav," he said softly. "If anyone can lead this fleet to victory, it's you. You are my finest soldier. I'm proud of you."
She nodded, smiling thinly, not sure if her smile was proud or bitter.
"I am not your finest soldier," she said softly. "Marco and Addy are. For that, I'm grateful."
Petty nodded. He left. Only moments later, she saw his shuttle depart from the Lodestar and glide down to Earth.
She walked through the starship's corridors. The Lodestar had been refitted for war. The science labs had been converted into munition bays. Most of the scientists were down on the surface, working for military R&D. Gunners and security troops had replaced them on the Lodestar. Holes had been drilled into the hull, and cannons now thrust out into space. Thicker shields had been added. This had once been a ship of exploration, of discovery. It was now a battleship. And though Ben-Ari had spent her life in the military, this saddened her.
It was still a HOPE ship. She still wore her HOPE uniform. She still fought for HOPE, not the Human Defense Force. Yet today HOPE was a military force. Today all of Earth was an army. Today every factory, every mom-and-pop shop, every kid with a nickel to donate, every old veteran with one more fight in him—they all joined the war effort. They all fought for Earth.
May the Lodestar someday become a ship of science again, she thought. May someday I be an emissary of peace rather than an angel of war.
Earth Eternal (Earthrise Book 9) Page 18
