Invasion | Box Set | Books 1-7

by Platt, Sean

  If they had to meet, Moab was better than Andreus’s turf every day ending in Y.

  “Is Grace inside?”

  Benjamin nodded, trying to fight the feeling that Andreus claiming his sixteen-year-old daughter was being handled like a hostage exchange.

  “Yes. Come on in.” He didn’t want to ask the next question because it sounded untrusting, but there was something missing — something that intensified the feeling of a hostage exchange. “Where are our people?” he added.

  “They’re coming,” Andreus said.

  Benjamin looked at the Cherokee. There would have been room in the vehicle for five.

  Andreus followed Benjamin’s gaze. Then, blessedly, a seemingly genuine smile cracked his weathered features. “It’s too tight in the back if it’s three wide. Besides, I don’t ride with anyone I don’t know. No offense.”

  “Of course,” Benjamin said.

  The way people talked about the Republic, Andreus had his people trained and fiercely loyal. But outsiders might take it upon themselves to rid the outlands of a warlord, jumping forward with a garrote to strangle him while crossing the desert.

  “There,” he said.

  Benjamin followed his finger. At first, there was just the sound of an engine and a brown plume of dust, but after a few minutes the distant noise changed pitch. The cloud got bigger. Sunlight winked off a windshield. Tires ground on packed clay. Then a second Jeep SUV pulled up beside the first. Cameron was the first one out, his shoulder wrapped in a white bandage, his arm in a sling. Piper followed, holding his arm as if to lend support where it wasn’t needed. A Hispanic driver emerged next but didn’t come forward. Last to exit, via the passenger side door, was a young man Benjamin assumed must be Trevor Dempsey.

  They came forward. Taking care with Cameron’s shoulder, Benjamin wrapped his son in an embrace. He hugged Piper too, finding her smile all too grateful, as if she’d wanted to be here all along, having suffered a two-year prison term. He shook Trevor’s hand, introducing himself unnecessarily, while the young man did the same.

  He took a moment to survey the new arrivals: the outlands leader and his lieutenant, the three prodigal sons and daughters, and the second driver who, it turned out, apparently meant to stay outside, on a picnic table in the shade. Benjamin led the others inside, wondering what he’d managed to get himself into.

  Piper Dempsey, wife of the viceroy.

  Trevor Dempsey, son of the viceroy.

  And their new mutual, reluctant allies.

  For better or worse, the Andreus Republic and the scientists now shared an enemy. The Astrals might need Andreus’s control of the outlands, and might hold their retaliation until all arguments were considered. But Benjamin felt deeply that the laboratory’s luck, which had held for far too long, was now finally numbered in days.

  He looked up before holding the door open for the others to enter.

  The sky was blue, wide, and empty.

  But soon that would change.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “I’ll need some time to analyze this.” Benjamin pointed at the stone tablet’s projected image and its strange legend Piper had seen on Meyer’s computer. “For now, let’s not assume anything. Assuming, on this scale, is a terrible idea.”

  “What do you mean, on this scale?” Cameron sat beside on another of the lab’s plastic-and-tubular metal chairs. It felt better than Piper had expected — better, perhaps, than she wanted to admit — to be back in Moab. She’d never have wanted to vacation in Utah back in her New York City days, but the time between her last Moab visit and now had been spent somewhere more comfortable and yet far less bearable. Returning to Benjamin and even Charlie — with Cameron by her side, guilty as it felt — was like a warm fire after a long, cold winter.

  “You’ve played the telephone game, right?” Benjamin said. “Where one person whispers a phrase to the next person, and that person passes the message along. And by the time the message makes it around the circle, it’s always wildly distorted?”

  “Sure.”

  “This,” Benjamin said, tapping the projection, “is at least a thousand-year-old game of telephone. Maybe much older than that. The oldest ruins we know of — and that ancient astronaut theorists would point to as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation — go back twelve thousand years and effectively double what most archaeologists admit is the history of civilized humanity. Everything we’re dealing with here — everything we might use to make sense of the Astrals’ actions today based on their actions in the past — is thousands of years of hearsay at best. And before we can analyze something like this, it’s guesswork threaded through speculation.”

  Piper felt disappointed. Part of her had hoped Benjamin would take one look at the tablet and know exactly what to do with it. Worse: Deep down, she realized she’d been seeing getting the slip drive’s information to Benjamin as the end of this adventure rather than one of its many midpoints. But that was ridiculous. What had she thought — that the language upon it would reveal a recipe for a universal Astral poison that, once brewed, would cause the aliens to flee the planet and allow it to regain its feet without harm? She dimly remembered watching an alien movie with Meyer, what felt like a thousand years ago. The aliens in that movie had been allergic to water. In the famous War of the Worlds, the more sensible culprit defeating the aliens had been Earthbound bacteria. That’s what she’d been foolishly hoping for: a quick fix. But of course life was never that easy.

  “But it does tell us something we need to know, right away,” he continued.

  Piper’s chin lifted. From the corner of her eye, she caught Nathan Andreus and Jeanine Coffey. He looked stoic, and that was frightening to Piper. Nathan’s daughter, on their reunion, still wouldn’t talk to him. She supposed that would make anyone unfriendly.

  “It tells us,” Benjamin lectured like a natural professor, “that what they’re looking for — the weapon we call Thor’s Hammer — probably isn’t as readily accessible to them as we’d thought.” He touched the screen where the placard read, DEVICE MISSING. “What Trevor overheard seems to corroborate this. They’re searching at every capital, under all the new structures. Which, I’m proud to say, at least ties up one loose end.”

  “Which loose end?” Cameron asked.

  “The question, ‘What’s special about Vail?’ There’s something under that mountain after all.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t get ahead of me, Cameron.” Benjamin flashed his usual smirk. “I said something under the mountain. Give me credit for that before more questions are asked.” His affable expression flicked toward Andreus, but the man didn’t return his smile.

  “I don’t know what’s under there,” Benjamin continued. “Nobody does. It’s not in any of the records. If I had to guess — and this is only a guess, you understand — I’d say it’s a temple of some sort. Some place of symbolic intent where they left their doomsday device.”

  Nathan said, “Why?”

  “That’s what we can’t quite figure out.” Benjamin’s voice went a bit jittery as he answered Andreus. “One theory is that it’s something necessarily Earthbound because of effects it has on the planet. A means of tipping our rotational axis, for instance.”

  “You think there’s some magic box under that pyramid that will knock the Earth off kilter?” Nathan wasn’t really asking; Piper could hear the difference. He was expressing disbelief in a ridiculous crackpot idea — which, for most of Benjamin’s life, was how his ideology had always been seen.

  “Maybe literally, maybe symbolically,” Benjamin said. “Think of some of the legendary disasters of the past. The Bible is full of examples.”

  “The Bible?”

  “Stories,” said Benjamin. “Again, I’ll refer you to a game of telephone. Maybe some of what’s in there is totally true. But maybe some of it has simply been told enough times that it’s become distorted. Certainly, extraterrestrial visitations of ancient peoples would appear godlike. Thi
nk of some of the stories we know: a great flood, for instance. A man tasked with preserving history beyond what was essentially a biblical reset.”

  Piper had been raised with plenty of religion. She couldn’t help it; Benjamin’s theories rankled her. “You think Noah’s Ark was meant to survive …” She could barely say it, and paused for effect. “An alien apocalypse?”

  “We can’t know, Piper. That’s my point. Maybe a literal god came down and made it flood. Or maybe those ancient people recounted their interpretation of those events: powerful beings from the sky who decimated humanity then tasked some with preserving heritage to try again. I won’t give you all the details, but there are plenty of theorists who believe there really was an ark — but that instead of taking two of each animal, that Noah of legend took genes instead.”

  Nathan looked like he might walk out in boredom. What stopped him, perhaps, were two things. First, nobody else, disbelief notwithstanding, seemed willing to budge. And second, Nathan had taken a rather decisive stand when he’d burst into Heaven’s Veil to rescue Cameron — along with Piper and Trevor. He’d been playing the middle and was now clearly on humanity’s side. Piper could practically see the Astrals above, weighing his benefits and transgressions, trying to decide if they could stand to lose Nathan Andreus and leave the Colorado/Utah outlands to chaos.

  “There are a lot of mysteries here,” Benjamin went on. “Is the missing device truly Thor’s Hammer? From what I can tell of the drive’s other data, I’d say it’s likely. There’s talk in there of completeness — of a ritual the Astrals may be going through now, and may have gone through every time in the past. Before making first contact with us, landing that first day and disembarking the nine worldwide viceroys, they established networks to harvest our thoughts. Even the viceroy selection process feels to me like a filtering down — like a tournament almost. They abducted a lot of Earth citizens then eliminated a few from consideration over time each day or week before sending them home. They were left with chief selections: all high profile, all highly respected or at least known prior to their abductions. All authorities — the kind of people humanity has a track record of listening to, but also possibly representatives of the best our species has to offer. So this, too, looks to me like a ritual.”

  He tapped the screen, still showing what seemed to be a keystone tablet that had frustrated the Astrals as much as it was frustrating Benjamin. That tablet was causing the Astrals to scramble in a worldwide dig.

  “They’ll do what they’re going to do. An ice age, a flood — maybe they’ll incinerate us all. Maybe they’ll eat us. But they’re planning something malevolent, and all that’s stopping them is finishing this ritual — finding this one thing they need. Again, literally or figuratively. They either need this device before they can push the button, or they’re looking for the button itself.”

  Trevor looked cold. He looked, Piper thought, as desperate and afraid as she felt. She wanted to tell Benjamin to keep things less dire — there were children present. But Trevor, the youngest among them, was seventeen. Plenty old enough for war, and well past adulthood in countless cultures across endless ages.

  “Let’s focus on what we know, not what we don’t,” Charlie said from the corner.

  “Right,” said Benjamin, seeming to remember himself. “What we know is that the Astrals’ intentions are not good—”

  “Thanks, Sherlock,” Coffey said.

  Andreus shot his lieutenant a look. Apparently, disbelief was okay, but jocular sarcasm was over the line.

  Benjamin stuttered for a moment then continued. “We know they’re digging under all nine of the new monoliths. So whatever they’re searching for, they seem to be riffling through their pockets as if searching for keys.”

  “Any idea what those big monoliths are for?” Trevor asked.

  “It’s hard to say. None are complete. And they’re not hurrying either. It makes me think of a ticking clock. Something they know needs to be done and will take time, so there’s no need to rush. Maybe that’s good for us and maybe not. But as to what they’re for? Who knows? I’d ask the same questions about the Apex. But as our departed friends at the church in Heaven’s Veil pointed out, they’ve had to scramble. They started with stone, presumably because that still seemed to make sense. They’ve only glimpsed us while they’ve been gone, through the eyes of select people. They may have made assumptions about us and the way we’d be based on past visits and peeks, but those assumptions turned out to be false.”

  “Like the Internet thing,” said Piper.

  Benjamin nodded. “Old visitation evidence suggests we used to be much better at using our collective minds. Today, not so much. We must seem especially foreign to them. Let’s say the monoliths are hubs of a worldwide network, possibly using orbiting motherships as repeaters to connect them. It even makes sense. But if that’s the case, they can’t just tap into us as a collective. They need to make sense of individual minds, which may be slowing them down.”

  “Are you saying,” Nathan began, “that our apathy and alienation is protecting us?”

  “Maybe.” Benjamin shrugged. “This seems tentative and methodical to me, though again, it’s impossible to say for sure what things were like thousands of years ago. But they seem to be feeling us out. Adapting as they go. The Apex and the other monoliths may be part of that. An attempt, in conjunction with those first stone networks, to connect us. But they could just as easily be intergalactic antennas. Or big arrows that say, ‘Dig here.’”

  Andreus shook his head. “Why am I here? I can’t do shit with guesses.”

  “Then focus on what we know for sure,” said Benjamin.

  “You said that before,” Andreus countered. “And here we are, still with the guesses.”

  “What we really know for sure,” said Charlie. “Brass tacks.”

  “And what’s that, Mr. Cook?” Andreus asked.

  Charlie pointed at the screen. “We know they’ve lost something they need before they can do what they have to do.”

  Andreus waited. Finally, he said, “So what?”

  “So,” Charlie continued, “we have to find it first.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Lila entered the small house on the mansion grounds as if she owned it then looked around its living room for Raj. Finding only the home’s owner present, she fell into Christopher’s lap, kissing him.

  “Whoa. Wait,” he said. “What’s this?”

  Lila kept kissing Christopher. She held him. She hugged him tight enough that he dropped his bottle of hydrogen peroxide and inadvertently rubbed the already-wet cotton ball he’d been using to dab his wound against her bare arm.

  “Good to see you too, Lila.”

  She grabbed both sides of his face, squishing his cheeks. Lila was on his lap, awkward in the way she’d fallen against him, putting herself at an odd angle. She kissed him again.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Why would you think I was dead?”

  “I heard explosions. Gunshots. I saw fire and smoke.”

  Christopher exhaled. He looked at the front door, which was as closed as it should be. Lila followed his gaze, remembering the way she’d glanced around the room. Paranoia had trained them both.

  “Did you talk to your mom?”

  “Yes. Just now.”

  “Then she told you I wasn’t dead.”

  “I was still worried. What the hell happened out there?”

  “Heather didn’t tell you?”

  “She told me, but …” Lila realized that she’d been hoping Christopher’s story would be different. She’d thought on some level that his version could undo her mom’s. Heather had been grim — so unlike her old self, increasingly like her new one. Lila didn’t like the way they lived but abided it. Piper clearly hated it enough to flee. But Lila’s mother would never run. She’d live as they did, hating herself and making jokes that somehow always boomeranged back at the joker. She’d spent two years inadvert
ently insulting herself (or maybe intentionally insulting herself; she’d come from self-loathing parents), and it had stripped much of the mirth from her biting wit.

  “She told you about Trevor and Piper?”

  “That they climbed into a tank and ran off? Yes. Should I be glad or not? I honestly couldn’t tell.”

  “Glad in that they didn’t get eaten by peacekeepers, yes. But as to the rest?” Christopher sighed. “They went with Cameron Bannister. I assume Heather told you he showed up, rather surprisingly, after I brought her back here the first time? Based on what Terrence told her afterward, I mean.”

  Lila nodded. She chose to see Christopher’s return to the chaos after dropping off her mother as heroic rather than infuriating. She’d heard them arrive downstairs, but Christopher hadn’t stayed. If he’d been called back by her father, she should forgive him. If that was true, there’d have been no other way.

  “She told me.”

  Christopher looked around yet again. The fear, even inside his small, private house, clanged on Lila’s sense of right and wrong. Why were they here? Why did they live like this?

  “I don’t know where he came from. Terrence doesn’t know either. We found Piper with some others, and I thought that was it. Your dad put us on alert about an intruder at the gate, but the Astral command, which usually rubber-stamps the viceroy’s orders or vice-versa, called us back — and back was where we were when Trevor and your mom came to me. I assume Cameron must’ve been the intruder, but he was alone when we found him. No one was chasing him. We saw two Titans holding your dad back, not coming at us.”

  “Titans don’t fight, do they?”

  “No. I don’t even think they can. But they’re always in communication with the mothership and the peacekeepers, and there’s no obvious reason to keep your dad back. It doesn’t make sense. There’s this big alarm about an intruder, but it’s like they opened up, invited him in, then let him run right into us and Piper and Trevor.”