Stars Rain Down

by Chris J. Randolph

  “Jack…” The tone of Albright’s voice spoke volumes.

  “I know,” he said.

  Trash said, “We gotta get a move on.”

  Somewhere in the past, Jack was sitting in a packed room full of new recruits. He was lost and angry. “Will we engage civilian targets?” he asked, knowing damn well what the answer would be.

  “We don’t have all day,” Trash said urgently, and the insistence in his voice dragged Jack back into the present.

  His head was a jumble of thoughts, feelings and emotions. Two images kept assaulting him; one a fresh memory and the other a vision of the future yet to come. The rhino child’s bright eyes held hope for a better tomorrow, then was snuffed out by a white-hot explosion that left nothing behind but a scorch mark.

  “We’re aborting,” Jack said.

  “What?” Trash barked.

  “It’s one thing to take out their power. Deal a blow to their infrastructure, but this… I won’t commit genocide.”

  “Genocide? This is justice.” Trash reached into his pack and pulled out his det packs. “If you don’t have the balls, I do.”

  Before the last word came out of Trash’s mouth, Jack drew his pistol and leveled it square at his head. “I’d sooner kill you than let you do this, McGrath.”

  “What’s your malfunction, Jack?”

  Trash continued preparing his packs, and Jack took it to the next level. He flicked off his safety, took a long step forward and pressed the barrel flush against the other man’s skull. “We’re corpsmen, God damn it. We’re better than this. Now put it away before I end you.”

  Trash gritted his teeth and stared uncut hatred back at Jack. Then he put the packs away.

  Jack lowered the gun and everyone started to breathe again. “This isn’t how we operate. Not ever. No matter how many of us they kill, we don’t turn into monsters.”

  Trash looked like he could puke bullets, but he didn’t test Jack’s threat, and it was the right decision. Jack wasn’t bluffing. He’d remembered what he stood for, and he would’ve shot Trash dead.

  “So what now? We just bend over and take it? Watch them wipe out the last of us?”

  Jack still had the gun in hand, and it felt heavier than he remembered. “No. We fight and survive, but we do it right. Military targets and infrastructure only. I’d rather die by my virtues than live like this.”

  Chapter 37:

  Detachment

  The moment was over, and everything was calm again in the circular generator room. Trash had a twisted grimace on his face, but he dutifully zipped his pack up and slung it back over his shoulder. The insurrection was over.

  Jack returned his handgun to its holster. At the same moment, the light in the generator room turned a deep, Cabernet red while the innermost ring of columns slid across the floor, forming a gapless barricade around the miniature sun. A low cry like a giant horn howled across the blue city. None of that seemed like good news.

  “What’s going on?” the demoman asked.

  Jack’s voice had an edge as sharp as a knife. “We’ve been found out.” He’d followed his conscience, and his luck immediately turned to crap. He didn’t know what message the universe was trying to send him, but he sure he didn’t like it.

  Jack rushed back out the entry tunnel and the rest of the team followed. He stopped at the cliff, and when he looked out over the city, he could already see the enemy on their way. Swarms of flyers cut through the air traffic, heading straight for them. All the while, the howl of the giant horn never stopped or faltered.

  “What do we do?” Trash asked.

  There were too many unknowns, and Jack did his best to process them. He could lay a trap with the explosives and try a pitched battle in the generator room, but there was no way to escape. The enemy outnumbered them by the millions, and would wear them down eventually. It might give Charlie and the others a chance to clear out, though.

  The closest flyer was still more than a minute away. “We run. Everybody, back down the wall.”

  The team didn’t need to be told twice. Each of them drew their rappelling hooks, latched onto a handle, and dropped over the edge feet first. Their arrestors whined, and with each stop, the team grabbed new handholds, retracted cable and reattached, only to repeat the process again and again.

  By the time they reached the bottom, flyers were circling the generator room above and were starting to search in widening circles.

  Charlie came out of the shadows with Nikitin and the others in tow. “What the hell did you do up there?”

  “Not sure,” Jack said, “but they’re on to us.”

  “Ya think?” Nikitin spat sarcastically. “So what now?”

  Jack had come to a decision during the trip down, one he didn’t particularly like, but it was better than the alternatives. It was a bad plan, but it would get his people out, and that was the only thing that mattered. “Trash, I need your det packs,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Shut up and hand ‘em over.”

  Trash dug the pale bricks and detonators out of his pack and tossed them to Jack, who stowed them away. “Put on the robes and stay hidden until you hear the first of these go off. Charlie, you take everyone back out the way we came. Meet up with the others at the rendezvous and just keep going.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m gonna raise a ruckus.”

  Charlie got in his face. “Don’t be stupid, Jack. We’re all leaving. Just need to be sneaky about it.”

  “That ship sailed, and you know it. They won’t stop searching until they find someone, and if they don’t find anyone here, they’ll start looking outside and we’re all fucked. This way, you all at least have a chance. Now follow my damn orders.”

  “Yeah, and no one’s going to notice there’s only seven of us?”

  “Who can count with bombs going off?”

  Jack was ready to punch his little brother in the mouth, but it didn’t come to that. Charlie nodded his head solemnly and started handing out the robes. “You heard the man. Put ‘em on.”

  When Jack turned to Albright, she unshouldered her rifle. The doctor was a five-foot commando again. “I’m with you.”

  Jack walked over to her, took her in his arms and kissed her. Every inch of her was tense, but she melted and then it seemed to last forever. Jack pulled away, and said, “Like hell you are.”

  “But I…”

  “They need you, Lisa. And I need you to survive. It’s what I do.”

  She was stunned, but Jack wouldn’t budge on this. He could sacrifice his own life if he had to, but not hers. Not now.

  He gave her one more gentle kiss on the forehead and said, “I’ll see you again. I promise.”

  And he was gone before she could say another word. Jack ran hard, his feet pounding tiled floor, and the taste of her still on his lips. He flew out from their hiding spot and circled the generator tower; when he was ninety degrees around the bend, he turned and bolted off into parts unknown.

  Jack came to his first stop fifty meters on. He pulled a putty-like demo pack out and attached it to a shack, then jammed a detonator inside. He set the timer for ten minutes, set his watch-alarm for nine-forty-five, and bolted off running again.

  He hit a residential sector, pulled the rifle from his back and started to yell. Crowds of aliens ran away in terror, like a tiger had escaped from the zoo and was rampaging through the streets.

  “Get down!” he yelled as he began to fire. He aimed high to avoid the bystanders, and his rounds sparked impotently off the stalagmite buildings. The loud bark of fire had the desired effect, sending the innocents scattering, and he continued running right on past.

  He didn’t bother to look over his shoulder. There was no need. The cyclic sound of the flyers overhead was enough to let him know he had their attention. Another few paces on, he heard soldier rhinos grunting and galloping, and he knew the ground forces were onto him as well.

  The residential area gave way
to a market, and Jack’s howling madman routine turned heads wherever he went. Crowds parted before him like the sea before Moses, and he sprinted on, driven by an endless surge of adrenaline.

  Jack decided to explore a bit. He cut between two buildings and loped up a ramp to the suspended catwalks. It was a whole new part of the city made of branching beams, with its own set of store fronts and signs scrawled in unfamiliar characters. Yet more levels waited above.

  Then the game got interesting. This level was too tight for flyers, and they stayed high up above, but now every corner held a set of rhinos stampeding in his direction. Escape routes closed off all around.

  Jack heard a skittering noise behind him and instinctively hit the deck just in time for a jackrabbit to go flying overhead. The small creature yelped when it missed him, and clawed at the floor as it slid away.

  He turned his head back and saw two more of the fast creatures bounding his way. Both leaped into the air at the same time, and with a spin, he dodged one and flung the other off the catwalk onto the ground floor below.

  “Toro!” He shouted, before sprinting off once again.

  Option after option disappeared, forcing his choices until he found himself on a long bridge with no offramps, and nothing nearby but empty air. Enemy forces moved into position on either end. They’d snared him.

  He fired a couple rounds toward the far end as a warning, and the enemy ducked back. Then he turned and opened fired on his pursuers, sending them scattering. He stopped when the magazine ran dry.

  “Now what?” he asked himself.

  The alarm on his watch went off, and an idea sparked in his head. It would require pinpoint timing, and it was the most dangerous and stupid thing he’d ever considered. He worried that it might just work.

  Jack pulled a second demo pack out, drove a detonator into it and set the timer for fifteen seconds then dropped in the middle of the catwalk. The whole process took him no more than five seconds.

  With his rifle quiet, the enemies at either end of the bridge started moving forward, and Jack flicked his head back and forth, watching both groups advance. When they were thirty meters off, a loud, hollow boom registered in the distance. His signal to move.

  All eyes turned toward the explosion, and Jack made good on the opportunity. He pulled his climbing hook out and hurdled the guard-rail, barely managing to latch onto it as he flew over, then plummeted toward the ground.

  The arrestor slowed his descent, and when he reached the bottom, he released it and dove across the ground. At the same time, the catwalk above exploded, and the entire bridge collapsed in a billowing cloud of dust. The shock wave struck him like a wrecking ball, driving him another ten meters across the smooth floor, where he slammed into a wall and stopped.

  Bruised, bloodied and disoriented, he wobblingly tried to stand, but only slipped and fell back down. The cool ground felt so nice against his face that he couldn’t imagine trying ever again. In his dizzy head, he drifted between the blue alien city and the memory of a terrible hang-over, when he’d lain on a cool, smooth bathroom floor.

  During one of his fits of consciousness, he thought he heard rhino troopers grunting, and when he opened his eyes and looked around, the ugly bastards were standing over him in a circle. They spoke back and forth, probably trying to decide what to feed him to.

  Everything was dim, and Jack realized he didn’t have long. He couldn’t think straight. He numbly pawed at his chest and found what he thought was a gun. He pulled the weapon out of its holster, fumbled at the hammer until it clicked, then aimed upward and fired. With a thump, a bright red-orange flare arced into the sky.

  “Damn,” he said. It wasn’t the first time he mistook the flare gun for a weapon. After a moment, his frustration disappeared and he slipped into heavy darkness. None of the dreams he found there were pleasant.

  Chapter 38:

  The View From Above

  Jack was confused when he woke up. Really confused. He’d been confused before, like when he got to the analogy section of his college entrance exams and couldn’t figure out how “dispatch” might relate to “sluggishness”. This was worse. If anything, he was roughly as confused as the time his roommate gave him a funny mushroom, and he spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how walls worked.

  The most confusing part was that he was still alive.

  His whole body hurt, and it felt like someone was trying to pull his arms out of their sockets. Worse, the room around him didn’t make a lick of sense. The walls were in the wrong place and made of green webs. There was something oddly like a door nearby, but it was attached to the ceiling. Everything was completely wrong in ways he couldn’t understand.

  Jack wanted to throw up, but the empty pit in his stomach told him it’d be uneventful.

  He couldn’t move. Cold metal shackles had every part of his body pinned, and struggling against them was useless. He didn’t bother to call for help, since something terrible might respond.

  So he lay there, breathing and aching, waiting for whatever the hell would happen next. Time melted away without any way to measure its passage. He might have lain there for hours, days or weeks for all he knew. It was all the same. A single, unending moment, punctuated only by the procession of mangled memories, and the short fits of sleep that interrupted them.

  He thought back over the strange journey that brought him to that room. He remembered the life he used to have, all of the weird and wonderful places he’d seen, and the grateful faces he’d helped along the way.

  That life existed once upon a time in a storybook that had since been burnt to ash and scattered to the wind. His life was gone, replaced by a world he hardly recognized. A world that had been crushed, eviscerated and torn limb from limb. In its smouldering remains, Jack had changed as well. He became someone different. Someone harder, who killed efficiently and without remorse, over and over until it became clear the killing could never sate him. It would never heal the wound, or quiet his mourning for the lifetime left behind.

  Of this new life, which had hit a dead-end in some screwy alien prison, Jack knew only one thing: whatever changes might come would be for the worse. And after an eternity alone with his thoughts, Jack’s prediction came true.

  The strange door in the ceiling opened like denim unraveling, revealing a blinding light behind it. Three silhouettes walked through the portal, and continued down the opposite wall. Jack stared at the visual puzzle for a few seconds, until his head straightened out and he figured it out. He’d been hanging from the ceiling all this time, and his captors were on the floor beneath him.

  Two rhinos stood with their massive autocannons at the ready, on either side of a new kind of alien. This species was much more human-like, but in gangly, funhouse mirror proportions. He wore a form fitting uniform that covered him from head to toe, made from some slick material in midnight-blue and slate grey. The double-breasted jacket reminded Jack of fascist armies, and the leathery mask looked like something from a kinky sex shop. A white crescent crossed one eye.

  The fascist alien’s movements were pin-point specific, and fluid without excess. He stepped to the center of the room and stopped beneath Jack, then looked up at the prisoner and carefully examined him. Apparently satisfied, he raised his right arm and tapped commands into some kind of wrist computer.

  He looked back up at Jack and began to speak. The sounds were familiar, and Jack realized the alien was speaking a human language. It was a form of Arabic, one of many languages that Jack hardly spoke a word of.

  “I don’t speak Arabic, asshole.”

  The alien looked back to his computer and entered some more commands. Jack couldn’t see the display very well, but he caught streams of text flying by in a rainbow of colors.

  “Subject language identification English. Understand does you thing I say?”

  “Yeah, sure. Fuck off, ya sack of shit. You understand that?”

  “Dialect North American. Variety Midwestern?” The alien’s sen
tence structure left much to be desired, but his accent was good and improving with every word. He had only a hint of something awkward in his pacing, like an autistic child.

  “Pacific States Alliance,” Jack said.

  “Thanking you.” He tapped some information into his computer, and then turned his full attention back to Jack. “Now we is capable to understand each’s other. I to fabricate questions, and you are making answer.”

  “And if I don’t feel much like making answer?”

  The response was one word. “Pain.”

  The alien’s sharp eyes studied Jack intently, analyzing every movement, twitch, and wayward glance. He felt like he was being vivisected.

  “You is understanding? Good. We commence questions. What name is?”

  “Go to fucking hell.”

  The alien shook his head, then removed a short baton from his belt. He made sure Jack got a good look at the weapon, then he thrust it into Jack’s armpit quick as a cobra strike. Jack’s whole side exploded in strobing, lightning flashes of pain that streaked out across his chest and arm.

  Jack gritted his teeth and grunted. His whole face twisted into a knot.

  “I was studied species acutely, and I having found many fifty productive nerve intersections. It is introduction. Pain will to increase during resistance continuing. You is understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I repeating, what name is?”

  “Pretty sure I told you to go to hell.”

  The baton struck in the exact same spot, but the pain was worse. It was an unstoppable flood, and his arm spasmed. When it finally subsided, Jack was struck by a memory of his karate teacher showing the kids a couple pressure points, talking about how effective they could be when used properly.

  “You is challenge. Is soldier yes? Screaming not, but will to scream soon. I to begin new nerve package, and true pain then.”

  Jack was drooling, but he couldn’t do a thing about it.

  “Name unimportant, Nefrem. Reveal location is battle fleet.”