by Platt, Sean
“Stay inside, Piper.”
“Tell me what you mean!” Piper grabbed his arm. “What ‘new’ do they have? Is it a problem?”
“Stay inside! I’ll handle this!”
But of course, Piper didn’t stay inside. When Meyer went out, she followed. Heather followed too. It was ironic: Heather following Piper for her turn with Meyer, just like in the old days. But then of course, Heather had been there first. And Heather, unlike Piper, wasn’t arm candy, and didn’t dress like she was.
“Meyer,” Heather said, more projecting her voice than shouting.
Two of the bland-faced Titans (Heather sometimes called them “albino Hulks,” always followed by smashing sounds) turned at the sound of her voice. They didn’t twitch toward her any more than they’d twitched toward whatever was happening outside. Heather was permitted to be in the viceroy’s mansion — and just as she must have made sense to them, their lack of action made sense to her. Heather couldn’t tap into their ESP any more than anyone else (although Meyer seemed able), but you didn’t need to know what they were saying inside their minds to see the patterns. Some of the Titans had gone outside without hesitation. These two had stayed inside. Apparently, they weren’t needed. The proper force had been deployed. Nothing with the Astrals, it seemed, was ever wasted. These two seemed to be at work despite explosions on the lawn, puzzling over the meaning of a small glass cube.
“That’s right, you heard me,” Heather said to their unheeding forms as she rushed past and through the open door. “Hulk smash!”
The Titans didn’t respond.
Outside on the lawn, Heather gaped at the sky. The usual immaculate blue was a mess of winding contrails, as if a scattered air traffic controller had been put in charge of the flight paths. Every few seconds, something exploded. She seemed to be seeing planes, rockets, and something else — swirling, twisting things that appeared to have lives of their own.
She stuttered up to Meyer. Piper clung to his arm below the explosive ballet. For a second, Heather hated Piper. Then the flash of hatred vanished, like always.
Meyer seemed to notice Heather’s presence with Piper’s.
“Get inside,” he said to them both.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on.” Heather tipped an invisible hat to Piper. “Hey, Piper. Lovely weather, isn’t it?”
“Get back, Heather. You’ll get hurt.”
“You’ll get hurt too.”
Heather looked at the sky. What had to be rebel rockets weren’t simply exploding on their own; they were being shot down by the round shuttles tasked with protecting Heaven’s Veil. The spheres were zipping about faster than her eye could follow, homing in on the contrails, seeming to reach out for the altered rockets and breaking them like sticks. The sky dance seemed effortless, but still shrapnel rained onto the city beyond the lawn. She could hear it striking roofs, landing on concrete — or whatever the aliens called the modified stone they’d laid for streets.
“I won’t get hurt,” he said.
“Because you’re Superman?”
Meyer turned and glared at Heather. His eyes, usually green, seemed almost gray. She’d seen that happen in the past, well before the Astral telescopes had spotted the approaching fleet of spheres. You didn’t mess with Meyer Dempsey when he gave you that look. Business rivals trembled beneath it. Even hungry wolves, Heather thought, might do the same if they found him in the wilderness.
“Get inside. Now. You too, Piper.”
Heather paused long enough to let Meyer know she wouldn’t go easily then began walking backward, keeping an eye on the skies. Piper did the same, and Heather took her hand. What she’d taken for Piper’s subservient fear, she now realized, was conflict. Piper wasn’t terrified. She was something else.
“You okay?” Heather asked.
“No.”
“Meyer?” Heather’s one-word question carried thousands of smaller queries inside it.
“He’s right, you know,” Piper said, now looking at her husband’s back. He was at the front of the sprawling lawn, a dozen feet from the palatial home’s front gate, in the middle of nothing, wholly exposed. His body language held all the mortal terror of a man waiting for a bus.
“About what?” Heather asked.
“He won’t get hurt.”
“How do you know that? I have half a mind to go out there and haul his ass back in here. If a stray explosion doesn’t hit him, an on-purpose one will. If I were out there with the rebellion, my first target after the aliens would be their chief toady.”
“I don’t know he won’t get hurt,” Piper said, “but he does.”
Heather wanted to reply that Meyer didn’t know dick, but she’d felt his changes. He couldn’t see the future, but sometimes it seemed like he could calculate it just the same. The shuttles were intercepting rockets from the jets and from bunkered installations past the city’s edge — but keeping up with the rockets wasn’t challenging at all. If the Astrals knew which weapon would strike where next, then Meyer knew, too.
“He’s full of shit,” Heather said anyway, glaring at Meyer’s stoic back. “Where’s his adoring public to witness this? Out carving effigies?” She turned to Piper, scooting them back as a ball of fire bloomed overhead. Then, less bitingly, she asked, “What did he say this is?”
“I saw the jets and told him. He wasn’t bothered at all. Then the alarm started, and he told me they had something new this time.”
“By ‘they,” you mean the rebellion.”
Piper nodded.
“Who are we rooting for here, Piper? Us or them?” Heather pointed at the jets. At the human pilots trying to save humanity while Heather and Piper watched its eclipse.
“Them or them,” Piper corrected.
Heather looked up. There was another explosion — one more rocket intercepted on its hurtling path toward the mothership. The next few rockets struck the giant sphere, but did less damage than the Black Monday nukes.
The jets were still streaking by in a taunt, staying beyond city airspace. Heather looked toward the trees and hills at the horizon. She followed a few of the stray contrails toward their hidden, secondary sources: rockets fired from pits, trucks, or mobile launchers. A coordinated attack on the ships above Heaven’s Veil in Colorado using intelligent weapons that were, of course, useless as anything else.
“Why aren’t they — ?”
Piper didn’t finish her thought. Shuttles finally broke ranks and headed away from their stations. Apparently tiring of chasing projectiles, they were heading out to decimate their bunkered sources instead.
Shuttles blurred toward the city’s edge, bringing the jets within range. Heather didn’t think they could fire very far. Why would they need to, given the shuttles’ speed? If they could close on a target in under a second, why use long-range weapons?
The first strike happened in a one-two clap that made both women flinch — though Meyer, still exposed on the lawn — didn’t twitch. A burnished metal sphere blurred into position mere feet from one of the fighters, at its nose, causing the pilot to compensate by attempting to bank away. He wasn’t close. The gray bird struck the sphere like a car crashing into a bridge stanchion and broke apart like a toy. Metal spun away with a tremendous crunch. Beams lanced from the craft like quills from a porcupine, spitting in a dozen directions, annihilating the remaining shards of plane.
Two more shuttles. Two more planes turned to balls of fire, moving close enough to fire their weapons point-blank with no effort at all.
With the fighters destroyed, the guard shuttles vanished from their positions overhead, zipping into the distance. Fire plumed beyond the trees, the explosion’s source unseen.
The shuttles moved like the aliens themselves: coordinated without speaking, decisions made as if by one brain, artillery moving out to follow that single common command. The mothership, unmoving, seemed to watch it all.
“Jesus,” Heather said.
Meyer was still on the lawn. Roo
ted. Staring into the distance where clouds of black smoke bloomed like rancid weeds.
A noise filled the air. A horrid, screaming, rending sound. To Heather, it was the grate of an engine desperate for oil and grinding its parts — an ancient machine approaching with reeking death on its breath.
“What the fuck is that?”
Trevor ran up from behind, shouting, his footfalls like hollow gunshots.
“Get inside! Get into the basement!”
Trevor started grabbing, but Heather and Piper were looking up, transfixed, seeing the rebels’ approaching surprise.
“Get inside, Mom! Piper! Get inside! DAD!”
Trevor pushed past them to run for Meyer, but Heather, snapping out of her hypnosis, grabbed his arm hard. Fear dawned as her eyes again found the sky and its grotesque bird: an enormous, ancient plane, cobbled together from history’s parts and quietly launched, engines unable to hold their stealth as it banked above. The goliath’s flight path doubled back in a wrenching, shuddering turn, having come from behind while the shuttles were occupied up front.
Headed directly for them, surely brimming with death.
The plane’s nose wrenched slowly around, peeling the air, lining up with Meyer and the house behind him.
The rebellion couldn’t fight the Astrals, so they’d fight the aliens’ allies and what they’d built instead.
“Meyer!” Heather shouted.
He didn’t move.
Seconds passed, too fast — and yet timeless.
Above, the mothership didn’t flinch. Why wasn’t it coming? Could it only decimate, lacking the shuttles’ precision? Or was it simply content to allow this — to let a flying pipe bomb strike the city’s center without a care?
Meyer, his back to Piper and Heather, watched it come.
Trevor continued to tug and shout as Heather tried — now with Piper’s help — to yank him away.
The plane was almost falling from the sky as it turned, not trying to launch an attack so much as be an attack. Surely, it was loaded with explosives and flammables, the pilot a kamikaze. They didn’t have time to get deep below the house, but they had to try.
Meyer raised his arms. Unable to turn away, Heather watched the plane bank and roll, its massive wings now striking trees in its final deadly approach. She could see the pilot and his hateful human face.
“DAAAAAD!” Trevor wailed.
All of a sudden, the plane struck nothing.
Less than a hundred feet from the mansion gate, the enormous craft detonated as if it had collided with a mountaintop. Fire consumed it — so much that for a few seconds, Heather couldn’t see the plane’s shining skin at all. She waited for the shrapnel and fallout, crouching as Meyer failed to cower, wrapping her arms around Trevor as Meyer raised his own arms high.
A vast sphere of yellow and orange bloomed as if the plane had exploded inside a transparent shell.
Shrapnel didn’t fly.
Fire didn’t spread.
The huge bomber died its spectacular death inside the invisible shell, its damage contained. The sphere, with the old bomber’s ruins inside, hovered in place, its contents burning. Eventually, Heather, Piper, and Trevor stood to watch, knowing the floating inferno — whatever force field had surrounded it, wherever it had come from — could no longer harm them.
Meyer lowered his arms and turned then approached the trio. Explosions boiled and rumbled in their transparent prison behind him.
“Trevor,” he said.
Trevor couldn’t speak but managed to nod.
“Call Police Capt. Jons for me. Tell him I’ll be doubling peacekeeper presence in the city effective immediately following this attack, and that he’s to align his officers to comply.”
Heather shuddered: Peacekeepers. Reptars. Doubled.
Trevor nodded. Meyer stalked past, leaving the floating sphere beyond the gate to burn.
Trevor called after him. “What’s going on, Dad?”
Meyer paused then turned to look at his son, wife, and former wife in the eyes.
“I think the rebellion knows something they shouldn’t, and are getting desperate.” Again, he turned to walk away but paused at Trevor’s fresh question.
“What do they know?”
Meyer looked for a moment like he might not say, then his body language changed in a way Heather recognized. His way of saying, I guess the cat’s out of the bag, so what the hell.
“I think they know the Astrals have lost something they need,” he said, “and now they’re digging.”
Chapter Four
“Anything?”
“No. Nothing. Wait. Hang on.”
Cameron watched his father and Danika bustle between stations in the Moab research facility’s “communications room” — a place Cameron still thought of as the coffee room. When they’d hooked up with Ivan (and his serious attitude, strong enough to be a second person), he’d dragged his quasimilitary equipment in to join what Benjamin already had and insisted on a “nerve center” from which all communications could be monitored and coordinated. Cameron was a by-the-way kind of guy; he thought communications could be “done” rather than “monitored and coordinated.” But Ivan had won, and now this was the comm room. But there was still a shitty coffee vending machine against the wall, and although it had run out of supplies long ago, it was plugged in, and its front was lit like always.
“Anything?” Benjamin repeated.
“I said hang on.”
“I’ll hang on. But did you hear anything or not?”
“If you’ll just hang on,” Danika repeated, “I’ll answer that question.”
Ivan reached out, his fingers beckoning for Danika to hand him the headset that had started life as Charlie’s personal headphones. The headset on the ancient radio that had accompanied Ivan to the lab had glitched out a while back. Ivan had commandeered Charlie’s headphones as a replacement. Charlie, still holding a grudge, stood in the corner, his gray-brown beard particularly unkempt, bug eyes disturbing behind his glasses, not so much as leaning against the wall. He stood like a statue, his social retardation on full display. Cameron, for his part, wondered what Charlie used to listen to on those headphones. He listened to nothing now, and that told Cameron he’d been listening to something secret or embarrassing — something that wouldn’t translate to out-loud play. Probably, it had been both secret and embarrassing, like square dance fiddle rap.
“Give it to me,” Ivan said.
“Because you can hear better than me,” Danika said.
“Just give me the goddamned headset.” Ivan snapped his fingers.
Ivan was tall and rail thin — the kind of man you could knock over by accident and barely feel it. It was hard to believe he was military at all, let alone had once ranked highly before the nation had been decimated and turned him into what was essentially the head of military resistance for a four- or five-state area. Ivan’s intense blue eyes were the only thing keeping Cameron from disbelieving any of it. The man had only to hold someone in his gaze for a few uncomfortable, uncompromising seconds, and they’d follow his every command.
It might have meant something if the resistance mattered, but Cameron had never shaken the impression that they were playing house. The Astrals knew where the lab was; a mothership had hovered above for months. It was possible they didn’t know what the lab did or that Benjamin had spent his life researching Earth’s visitors and their past work, but they couldn’t be total idiots. Shuttles flew overhead all the time, but the ranch earned no special attention.
Benjamin said the aliens hadn’t pursued them because they were doing a good job of hiding their intentions. But Cameron was positive the Astrals had left them alone because to them, the ranch was no different from the rest of the outlands.
They’d been left alone, in short, because the resistance was a joke.
Danika looked for a minute like she might hold onto the headset for spite (she could listen to static for Franklin’s voice, same as anyone), but
then Ivan’s stare did its work, and she handed it over with an annoyed grunt. Cameron felt relieved. Even at an oblique angle to Ivan’s eyes, he’d felt uncomfortable.
Ivan slipped off his usual stocking cap in favor of the headset. Then, despite any signal being listen only, he adjusted the small mic he’d jury rigged in front of his reddish stubble.
“Anything?” Benjamin asked.
“Hang on.”
“He’s sooo much better at this,” Danika said, rolling her eyes.
Danika was no match for Ivan: small and feisty, with a pixie face and a tiny upturned nose. Cameron was reasonably sure his father had a crush on her despite her being closer to Cameron’s age, and despite her position under Charlie in the lab’s hierarchy.
“Hang on. I’m getting something.”
“Did it hit the pyramid or not?” Charlie, as usual, sounded annoyed. Though he could’ve just been being Charlie.
“Or did it miss?” Cameron asked.
Benjamin looked over, his intensity momentarily broken. He knew exactly what Cameron was asking and what he feared but spared Cameron the indignity (in Ivan’s hardline presence) of stating it. Internet inside Heaven’s Veil (though heavily censored and filtered) was nearly as good as it had been before the aliens’ arrival. Terrence and Ivan, working in tandem, had managed to hijack an air signal that gave them limited access to that network. In all likelihood, the aliens knew they’d managed a connection and had simply allowed it, but when the jets and mobile launchers around Heaven’s Veil had finally forced the shuttles guarding the cities to break formation and give chase, their hijacked camera feeds had flipped off like a switch. No sense in giving eyes to the resistance, the Astrals seemed to have decided, if they’re going to force us to kill them after all.
The guard shuttles had broken away from the city’s airspace, and Ivan had cheered despite knowing those good men and women were going to die — “for the cause,” he’d said. But Cameron couldn’t help noticing that they were still alive here in Moab. Just not worth the effort to exterminate, given the “merely irritating” nature of their best efforts.