Behind her flew ten thousand warships.
Most were U-Wing starfighters, small and fast and deadly. They were shaped like horseshoes, their heels mounted with cannons. An independent AI computer flew each one. On Earth, she would swap the AI with human pilots, for she trusted human instincts more than algorithms. Behind the starfighters flew warships, each the size of the legendary Minotaur that had fallen in the Marauder War. Thick shields coated the warships, and their cannons could devastate cities. Within each warship flew an entire brigade, five thousand strong, of robotic infantry. Each robot stood seven feet tall, coated with graphene armor, and wielded the firepower of a small army.
They were weapons of the Galactic Alliance. Weapons that could turn the tide for Earth. Machines of war built with the best technology the galaxy had to offer.
And with these terrors flew other ships.
Elongated tubes of water spun lazily, their sails as delicate and shimmering as dragonfly wings, looking from a distance like plankton. Inside them flew the Guramis, their fins like indigo banners. There were crystal ships, able to fire laser beams, and inside them flew the furry Silvans. There were rectangular warships lined with lights, piloted by the tall and green Taelians. There were Menorian ships too, shaped like spiral shells, and inside them flew Aurora's comrades—intelligent mollusks, the best pilots in the galaxy.
Ben-Ari gazed at this army from the bridge of the Lodestar. Her chest puffed out with pride.
"We have allies," she said. "We have friends."
The professor smiled at her. "For a moment there, you almost sounded like an optimist."
"All soldiers are optimists deep down inside. It's why we keep fighting. And I will never stop fighting for Earth."
Sadness filled the professor's eyes. "I hope that someday you can stop. That you can rest. That we can find peace."
"Peace?" Ben-Ari said. "I visited the Galactic Alliance, the headquarters of the most advanced species in our galaxy. And I saw machines of war. I saw armories that could devastate civilizations. I saw quarreling, warlike ambassadors itching for a fight. I wonder if peace is but a pipe dream, if every war we win leads to but a brief moment in the sun before the storm strikes again. Is that all we're doing? Surviving for brief moments of sunlight between eras of darkness?"
The professor held her hand. They gazed out at the stars together. "The most advanced species in our galaxy? No, Einav. We humans are adolescents, perhaps only toddlers, taking our first steps in the galaxy. The species we met are far more advanced than we. Yet they are, by and large, still biological, even if their biology is vastly different than ours. They are still governed by their animal instincts. Still quarrelsome. They are much like us humans, simply with better technology. They have formed societies. They maintain law and order. They have become Type II civilizations on the Kardashev scale, a goal humanity might not realize for thousands of years. But they are not the most advanced species in the galaxy."
She looked at him. "So who are?"
"We cannot see them," the professor said. "They have long ago abandoned their biological bodies. Some, perhaps, have uploaded their consciousness into machines. Many have abandoned the physical world altogether. They live as gods now, formless in the ether. Some perhaps are mere observers. Others perhaps still invisibly nudge galactic events like deities of ancient mythologies. Some might have forgotten the physical universe exists. There are levels beyond what the Kardashev scale describes."
"Is seems so far away," Ben-Ari said. "So difficult to comprehend. Do you think humans can ever reach that level?"
"No," he said. "For we would no longer be humans. But perhaps our descendants, a million years from now, will ascend above the petty quarrels of biological species. We would then become beings of pure consciousness and thought. The grays are not our only possible future. Perhaps instead of demons we can become angels."
"I'm not sure I would like that," Ben-Ari said.
Professor Isaac raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Because without a physical body, I wouldn't be able to do this." She pulled him into her arms and kissed him.
"Hmm." He nodded. "You do make an excellent point."
As she stood with her professor, she never wanted this to end. Never wanted to reach Earth. With all her heart, she wished she could just keep flying, to find a peaceful world, to hide away. There were countless habitable worlds out there, places she and the professor could disappear, live an idyllic life in a forest or glen. She could send the Lodestar onward with another captain, perhaps Niilo or Fish or Aurora. Hadn't she earned this rest? She had fought so much, bled so much, killed so much for Earth. Did she not deserve some peace at last?
She sighed.
That is what my father did, she thought. He hid away. He abandoned Earth at its hour of need. I never will. She tightened her lips and squared her shoulders. So I return to war. To blood. To killing. And maybe I fly to my death. I fly to Earth, a world that perhaps will never know peace. A world that I love, that I would die for. Because that is what soldiers do. We bleed in shadows so that others might stand upon our shoulders and glimpse the light.
They flew on through the darkness, thousands of starships. They flew to war.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kaiyo and Kaji hovered in space, lost in darkness, a million years in the future.
For hours they floated, marooned.
Finally—Addy's voice emerged from Marco's speakers.
"Poet?"
He blinked. He had fallen asleep in his sensor suit. He turned his head, and Kaiyo turned his massive head in tandem. The mecha creaked with the movement. It had suffered serious damage while fighting the krakens. Several holes filled its hull. A platoon of marines had died in the assault; their blood still stained the cracks. He still carried three platoons. The marines huddled in the lower decks now, many of them wounded. The mighty Kaiyo, legendary mecha of Taolin Shi, now limped through space like a broken toy.
Marco looked at Kaji, Addy's mecha. It looked worse. It was missing a leg and arm. All but fifty of its marines had died in the battle, and holes the size of houses pierced its chest and belly. Scratches covered its feline face, deforming its beauty. Kaji looked like she had flown through Hell and back. Repeatedly.
"What's up, Ads?" he said, speaking into his mic.
"Wanna switch mechas?" she said.
"No."
"Come on! Be a friend."
"No, Addy."
She sulked. "You suck."
They flew in silence.
After long moments, Addy spoke again.
"Poet?"
"Yeah?"
"Wanna wrestle?"
"No Addy."
She groaned. "But I'm bored!"
"I'm trying to think, Ads. And you're disturbing me."
She flew closer to him. "What are you thinking about? Freaks?"
"What? No!"
"Um . . . neither was I," Addy said, sounding sheepish. "I wasn't at all imagining what the son of the Pillowman and Lobster Girl would look like." She thought for a moment. "Probably just like the Pillowman since you need limbs to have lobster hands. Hey, Poet, do you think that if the Elephant Man had a baby with the Bearded Lady, that it would become a Mammoth Boy, or—"
"Addy! For Chrissake! Firstly, you're being offensive and shouldn't call people freaks. Secondly, I'm trying to think of where the grays are. Where that pyramid is. And I have an idea." He sighed. "Not an idea I like to contemplate."
"Tell me," Addy said, sounding more serious. When she looked at him, he could only see her mecha's scarred face, but somehow he could see Addy's gaze in the robotic eyes. And he knew that all her jokes—about freaks, about hot dogs, about wrestling—were her way of coping with the horror. Back on Earth, as children, they would often run into bomb shelters as the scum rained death from the sky. At those times, Addy would laugh, would boast about slaying the aliens, would pretend Marco was an alien and wrestle him. She would act the clown. That's how he would know she was terrified
.
She is the woman who raised Earth's survivors in rebellion against the marauders, he thought. She is among the strongest, wisest, bravest women I know. She jokes now because she's scared. Because she's lost. Because she knows how dire things are but dares not confess it.
"I'm thinking that we should go to Earth," Marco said.
Addy stared at him. "What? Poet, remember what the grays said? Earth is destroyed! We're a million years in the future now. Earth is gone. That's why the grays want to come back to our time. To conquer Earth."
"I know," Marco said. "But . . ." He sighed. "It's just a thought. A guess. A hypothesis. I have to see."
Addy shrugged. "All right, Poet, we can fly there. But we'll just find Earth smashed into chunks." Her eyes lit up. "Hey, there might be more crackers there!"
Marco frowned. "Crackers? Addy, stop thinking about food."
"I'm not! You know, crackers! With long tentacles, squirt ink, live inside asteroids . . ."
"You mean krakens!" Marco rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, whatever. Those assholes with the long tentacles. I've got a debt to pay." She clenched her one remaining fist. "I'm going to smash a few of those tentacled fuckers."
They engaged their engines.
They soared through space at warp speed.
For long hours they flew. Hours turned into days. They slept and ate in their mechas. They kept flying.
They charged forward, finally passing by Alpha Centauri, and saw Sol in the distance. Their home star. From this distance, it looked like any other star. But it was their star. It was the sun. And it looked the same as ever.
"Home," Marco whispered as they flew past the heliosphere, leaving interstellar space behind and entering the solar system.
They saw familiar sights. Pluto was there. Neptune shone ahead, shimmering blue. A few hours later, they passed by Jupiter. Its red storm was gone now, and the swirling patterns of orange, yellow, and red were different, but it was the same old planet, otherwise unchanged. It was the same old solar system.
When they flew past Mars, they were close enough to zoom in on Earth.
They expected to find chunks of asteroids, the planet gone, as the grays had described it.
They saw, instead, a new planet.
Addy and Marco gasped, staring through their telescopic eyes.
Where Earth had once been, a blue and white planet, they saw a black, desolate world.
"What the fuck?" Addy muttered, staring with him. "Who swapped Earth with that lump of coal?"
Marco sighed and lowered his head. "It's as I suspected. That is Earth."
"Bullshit!" Addy spat. "Earth is blue and green and white. It's beautiful. Almost as beautiful as me. That's just a black piece of shit in space!"
They zoomed in as much as they could. The black planet seemed lifeless. No blue oceans. No green forests. A haze of dark clouds cloaked it. Smog filled its atmosphere. It seemed inhospitable to life, crueler than Titan or Haven had ever been. A wasteland.
But it was Earth all right. The moon still orbited it. And when the smog parted, they could just make out the shape of the continents. The landforms had moved over the past million years, and the oceans had blackened, but there was no mistaking the general shape.
"It's Earth," Marco said. "Black Earth. An Earth polluted, ruined. An Earth destroyed." He switched off his telescopic lens and looked at Addy. "When the grays spoke of Earth's destruction, they didn't mean it was destroyed into pieces like Isfet. They meant this. An Earth turned into a wasteland."
"Poet, look!" She pointed back at Earth. "I see . . ." She gasped. "There's lights there! A city! Look!"
Marco looked back at Earth. As it rotated, the Middle East—at least what had once been the Middle East—came into view. Right around where Jerusalem had once been, they saw lights. It was a city. Marco zoomed in closer. Closer. As far as his zoom would go.
It was hard to be sure. From this distance, the image was still blurry.
But there, in the center of that dark city on the dark planet, rose a pyramid.
He switched off the telescope. He had seen enough.
"It's there," Marco nodded. "That's where Nefitis rules. That's where the gray army musters for war. On Earth."
"But . . . But . . ." Addy stared at the distant planet, then back at Marco. "But it's Earth! Fuck, Poet. The grays . . . I always thought . . ."
Marco sighed. "The grays were always saying they want to conquer Earth, right?"
Addy nodded. "Right."
"They said that in the future—in the time we're flying now—Earth was destroyed. Right?"
Addy nodded. "Right."
"Well, we always assumed that meant Earth was completely gone. Just chunks of rock floating through space. We were wrong. They meant this. They did conquer Earth already. They conquered it in their own timeline, leaving the ruins of Isfet behind. They conquered this version of Earth—a ravaged world, polluted, disgusting."
Addy frowned. "The grays were always boasting about how they wanted to conquer Earth. Now you're telling me they already did conquer Earth?"
Marco nodded. "They want to conquer our Earth. A planet that's still green—mostly green, at least. A paradise compared to this place. Look. Lailani and Ben-Ari both saw the same vision. A dark, desolate world of ash. On that world, they saw a decaying city, a pyramid in its center. We always just assumed that's a futuristic Isfet, because that's where Ben-Ari marooned the monks, and that's where she saw a pyramid. We were wrong. The grays had built another pyramid. And it's right ahead of us."
Addy stared at him. Her mecha's face was expressionless, but he could practically hear her frowning.
"Fuck," she finally said.
Marco nodded. "Fuck indeed."
"So there's Black Earth, the ruin in front us, where the grays live. And there's Green Earth, the world we came from, which the grays want."
Marco nodded. "And remember, the grays can't go back in time to the really early days of Earth. They can't conquer Earth during the Stone Age, say. If they did, they'd stop Ben-Ari from ever being born, from ever marooning the monks, from ever giving rise to their species. A paradox."
Addy sneered. "So it's a battle for Earth—here too. Our planet is ruined now, but it's still our planet. And the grays are infesting it. I say we exterminate them all."
"We can't," Marco said. "We only have these two mechas, and they're badly damaged. And we only have two hundred marines inside us. But we can try to reach the pyramid. We can try to break in. And we can kill the Tick-Tock King. Remember, he lives inside the pyramid. Nefitis's father. The creature that controls time travel. If we kill him, the grays can't time travel anymore. And our Earth—Green Earth—will be safe."
Addy clenched her fist. "Sounds good to me. Let's kill that Tic-Tac-Toe Fucker."
"Tick-Tock King," Marco corrected her. "Not Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Hey, Poet, I bet that king would make an excellent freak. I'll photograph him before we kill him. I'll submit him for the next Freaks of the Galaxy edition. Fuck, I should have taken a photo of those tentacled crackers too! Can we fly back real quick and snap a photo?"
"No, Addy." Marco fired up his engines. He kept flying closer to Earth. "Come on. Let's go home."
They roared through space, streaming toward Black Earth, a planet once beautiful, a planet now desolate. A planet that maybe they could still save.
* * * * *
The mechas stood on the dark side of the moon. Hiding. Waiting. Planning.
Four marine platoons had survived the battle with the krakens. The soldiers now gathered on the lunar surface, wearing black spacesuits, railguns in hand. The company sergeant was speaking to them, preparing them for the war ahead. Above the marines loomed the two mechas, empty now, two dark sentinels.
Marco and Addy left the soldiers in the valley. They crawled up a hillside, scattering pebbles and dust. It was a long, steep climb.
"Poet, carry me!" Addy said.
"Addy,
no."
She climbed onto his back. "But I'm tired!"
He groaned, clinging to the hillside. He struggled to shove her off. "God, Addy, you weigh as much as a tank."
"But we're on the moon now!" she said. "I only weight half as much here."
"As I said. As much as a tank." He finally managed to shove her off. "Climb nicely."
"But I'm not nice."
"Pretend for today," Marco said.
They kept climbing. Finally they reached the hilltop. From here they could see it on the horizon. Earth. A dark, wretched ruin. For a moment they could only stare in silence. Their sight of their beloved home, blackened and desolate, weighed upon them.
"Desolation, desolation, I owe so much to desolation," Marco quoted softly. "Jack Kerouac."
"Hot dogs, hot dogs, I owe so much to hot dogs," Addy said. "They're why I weigh as much as two tanks. Addy Linden."
Marco pulled out his binoculars. He focused them on Earth. His heart sank at the sight. He would never get used to seeing his homeworld like this. A black miasma hung over Earth. The oceans had turned black with filth. There were no more forests, maybe no more plants at all. The only sign of life was that city that rose upon Jerusalem's ruins.
And orbiting Earth—saucers. Thousands of saucers. Hundreds of thousands. He increased the zoom, trying to find the pyramid.
"Let me look!" Addy grabbed his binoculars.
"Hands off!" He shoved her back. "Where are your binoculars?"
"I, um . . ." She twisted her fingers. "I tried to build a death ray with them."
"You what?"
She groaned. "A death ray, all right? I thought that if I took the lenses and added a flashlight, and— Oh forget it. Give me your binoculars!" She grabbed them and stared at Earth. "Fuck me. There are about a million saucers there, did you know?"
"I had an inkling." Marco sighed. "Maybe if our mechas were in top form, we could have broken through. Made it to the pyramid. But Kaji is missing two limbs. Kaiyo is full of holes, and one of its cannons is dead. We'll have a tough time taking on the gray fleet."
Earth Eternal (Earthrise Book 9) Page 13