Space Above and Beyond - #1 The Aliens Approach - Easton Royce

by Easton Royce

  Pags leaned up on one elbow and offered a halfhearted smile. "Come on, it can't be that one-sided," he said. "I mean, they can't have better planes than we do...." Suddenly he didn't seem so sure. "Can they?"

  The truth was, the Alien planes had to be more advanced. Everyone knew it.

  "I knew we weren't alone," whispered Damphousse, "but I never thought it would be like this." She turned to Pags, who still fought hard to keep his over-hopeful outlook. "Do you think you'd be scared if you saw one?" she asked him.

  Pags couldn't answer.

  "I remember when I saw my first AI," mumbled Wang. "They looked so human. But something inside me could tell..."

  "I felt that way when I saw my first In-Vitro," chimed in Damphousse, then realized a moment too late what she had said. She turned to look at Cooper, who silently lay on his bunk, staring up at the worn, graphite ceiling.

  "I... didn't mean that the way it sounded, Coop," she said, and then looked away.

  Shane watched for Cooper's reaction. What Damphousse said must have hurt him, but he seemed so cold, so unreachable. When you get hurt that much, that often, thought Shane, maybe you just get used to it. Or worse—maybe in some strange way, it becomes almost comfortable.

  Cooper rolled over on his bunk and closed his eyes, as if the insult had been a good-night kiss from the mother he never had.

  While the others slept, Cooper Hawkes lay awake on his uncomfortable bunk, trying to make sense of his feelings. Rage was the only emotion that had ever done him any good, so he had never bothered much with the others. But over the past few weeks, he had sensed new feelings starting to take root in unexpected places. Like an inexplicable sort of protectiveness toward some of the others—like Wang and Pags, who often seemed like lost puppies. Not that he actually went out of his way to look out for them—but part of him wanted to.

  And then there was Shane. He found himself watching her more and more often, wanting to say something to her that wasn't crude or obnoxious, but not daring to.

  What was wrong with him anyway? This wasn't like him.

  In the bunk beside him, Shane suddenly tossed and turned in the throes of a nightmare. Cooper went over to her, not sure what to do. It reminded him of the time he blew a coolant injector on an Earthspeeder he had stolen. There, by the side of the road, he had popped its smooth hood to find an impossibly complicated engine, and he had had no idea what to do with it.

  He reached out and gently shook Shane awake. She let out a cry but then turned to look at him, the terror in her eyes quickly fading with the dream.

  "Sorry I woke you," she said to him.

  Cooper shrugged. "Wasn't asleep."

  She propped herself up and took a long look into Cooper's eyes. To his own amazement, Cooper allowed it.

  "Don't take this wrong," Shane said, "but... is it true that In-Vitros can't dream?"

  He wanted to hate her for asking a question like that, but instead he felt grateful that she had. "I dream," he answered. "I never had parents, but I always dream about them."

  Shane nodded. "Me too," she said, and explained to him how she saw them executed in the AI War. She showed him the scar where her sister had bitten her hand.

  Cooper took her hand to look at it. He didn't feel the scar—but he did feel how soft and warm her hand was.

  "All these years I took care of my sisters," Shane explained. "But I had to get away from taking care of people. That's why I joined the Corps. I don't want to take care of anyone for a while. Does that sound bad?"

  Cooper looked up. Her eyes were still looking at him—looking into him. He knew he should have hated that feeling, but he liked it. And he didn't know what to do about it.

  "Did you—did you ever lose anyone?" asked Shane.

  Before he knew what he was doing, or even why he was doing it, Cooper found himself reaching behind Shane's neck and pulling her close. And kissing her.

  It wasn't like the kisses he had given other girls on his jagged journey through life. Unlike the others, this kiss had a feeling attached.

  The kiss lasted only an instant before Shane clubbed him in fine military fashion and pushed him back on his bunk.

  "What the heck was that?" she asked. She didn't seem angry, merely amused.

  Cooper, on the other hand, was furious. Not at her. Her reaction made perfect sense. He was angry at himself. He had always understood his actions so very well—but now that was all falling apart. He couldn't explain to himself—much less to her—why he'd done it. And if it was an apology she wanted, she wasn't going to get one. Apologies were something he simply didn't do.

  "I don't know much about loss and nightmares," he said snidely, "so don't get in an uproar." He climbed back in his bunk but still kept his eyes on her, staring coldly, to make sure she was the one who felt uncomfortable.

  "I won't be around much longer anyway," he added.

  And only when she finally turned away from him in anger did he relax.

  Nathan was the first one off the transport, firmly planting his foot in the crimson dust of Mars. The print he left behind reminded him of that famous photo of the first footprint on the moon.

  Though his flightsuit was fully pressurized, Nathan felt his breath taken away by the expansive red landscape around him.

  Cooper, on the other hand, was not impressed. "What? Are you looking to buy real estate? Let's get this over with!" Cooper said, already unloading gear.

  The group looked at Nathan and at Cooper, not quite sure who was giving the orders.

  Nathan stood firm on the Martian soil. "First we secure our position."

  "Our position is out in the middle of nowhere," mocked Cooper. "There, secured." He turned to the others. "Now unload this gear!"

  Nathan wasn't about to take this kind of disrespect from Cooper. While Nathan was never officially made leader of the squad, Bougus had always left him in charge during the flight simulations and many of the other exercises.

  But everyone was painfully aware that Bougus was now on another planet. They were on their own for this mission.

  Nathan grabbed Cooper and turned him around. "The manual states—" Nathan began, but Cooper just laughed.

  "The manual? When they drop you in the middle of a hairy fur ball, you're gonna go checking the manual?" Cooper shook his head in disgust. "That's right, follow their rules. Let them keep bossing you around."

  Suddenly, Nathan couldn't take it anymore. There were plenty of times back on Earth when Nathan had wanted to punch Cooper's head through a wall, but he had held back. He was a Marine, and he had discipline, even if this sorry Tank didn't. But in this strange new environment without the eyes of the Marine Corps upon him, Nathan found that he couldn't control himself. He charged at Cooper, fists flying.

  Cooper, who had the sharpened battle instincts of an alley cat, blocked Nathan's punch—and countered. Cooper's padded fist caught Nathan in the stomach and sent him flying—much further than it would have in Earth's heavier gravity.

  In an instant, they were both on the ground, swinging at one another furiously. Forgetting the fact that they were geared up for the atmosphere of Mars, they punched the delicate equipment of each other's suits, butting their heavy glass and steel helmets like two rams.

  A red cloud of dust rose into the air around them, until finally Shane tore them apart.

  "What is wrong with you two? Knock it off!" She stared them down. "We're not gonna blow our mission because you jerks feel like fighting. Got that?"

  Nathan and Cooper wouldn't look at each other, or at her.

  "We're pushing on," she continued, "so you'd better get your heads screwed on straight."

  Shane had defused a tense situation, quickly and effectively. Like a leader. Suddenly everyone in the group was looking at her.

  "Damphousse, tell West our position," she ordered.

  A long silent moment passed. Shane looked to Nathan and Cooper on the ground, and to the others. When it came down to it, there was no question who the re
al leader was in this group. Whether or not anyone wanted to admit it, Shane was the only one who could give orders that everyone would listen to.

  Nathan could feel whatever control he had once had over the group completely slip away. He was surprised to find that for some reason, it didn't I bother him. Perhaps that was part of Shane's leadership ability too.

  "We're forty-five degrees south, two-hundred-and-seventy-one west; the Helles Planes," announced Damphousse at last. "The tracking drone is about four clicks from here."

  "Okay," said Shane. "Grab your gear; let's move out."

  They all fell in behind her and headed off across the Martian sands. Everyone but Cooper, who still sat in the sand, forgotten as usual.

  His air mix had been set low to conserve oxygen. The fight had taken a lot out of him. He was still catching his breath when he looked up and saw a hand in his face.

  It was Pags, offering to help him up. Cooper thought he sensed pity, and it just made him mad.

  "I can get up myself."

  "Probably," said Pags, "but it looks like you could use a hand, and I'm offering one."

  Again Cooper was visited by a feeling that was strange and new to him. He thought it might be friendship. He reached out his hand and let Pags help him up.

  "It ain't easy for me to recognize a helping hand," Cooper admitted to him.

  "If that's a thank-you, don't worry about it," said Pags. "Someday you'll pay me back."

  As they walked off together to join the others, Cooper idly began to wonder what his life might have been like had he been a full-fledged human instead of just a Tank. Maybe, in a better world, he would have had a younger brother like Pags.

  It must have been a sandstorm that destroyed the tracking station they were sent to repair. When they reached it, they found the device was eroded and dented, its solar-array foil flapping in the thin, carbon-dioxide wind.

  They set to work replacing the transceiver. Now more than ever, every tracking station was needed—even one as small and outdated as this one.

  Halfway through the repair, Damphousse pulled out a small golden disk from the antiquated machine.

  "Oh wow," said Wang. "An Earth message." He turned to the others. "Back in the twenty-first century it was required that all off-Earth installations have one of these. It has pictures and sounds of Earth, just in case an extraterrestrial happened to wander on by."

  The others laughed. Wang was always claiming that his family had been key players in the presuperconductor computer revolution a few hundred years ago, so it was only natural that he would know all ahout this stuff.

  He took the little gold disk and inserted it into what must have been the disk drive. Music played thinly into the diffuse Martian air. It was something every Earthling could recognize.

  "Mozart," said Nathan. "Concerto in D."

  Shane shook her head sadly. "If only this could have been our first contact with the Aliens."

  Cooper reached over and changed the tracks. Suddenly the sound of bagpipes filled the air.

  Pags laughed. "And if they heard this, they would have wiped us out a long time ago."

  Cooper switched tracks again, and something strange but rhythmic blasted through the air, heavy on percussion and guitar.

  "What the heck is that?" Damphousse laughed.

  "I know this," said Pags. "I studied it once in music appreciation. They called it rock and roll. This group is called, uh, the Pink Floyd. Yeah, that's it." Everyone figured he probably made it up, but it sounded just bizarre enough to fit the late twentieth century.

  Pags spread his legs apart, pretended his blaster was an electric guitar, and began to wildly strum it to the music, bouncing and gyrating like he was being electrocuted. He looked funny enough to get even Cooper to laugh.

  But their laughter didn't last long.

  BOOM! A sound that could only be a sonic blast echoed from above. With a flash of light, a fiery streak arced across the sky. Vanishing behind a volcano's summit, the flying object hit the ground with another bright flash.

  Shane was the only one with the presence of mind to start counting, measuring the seconds until the sound of the impact reached them. BOOM! The ground beneath their feet shook with an explosion more ominous than thunder.

  Shane calculated the difference between the speed of sound on Earth and Mars. She looked up at the others. "About ten miles away."

  "It was too slow for a meteor," said Nathan.

  No one was willing to guess what it might be.

  "Should some of us check it out?" asked Wang, clearly hoping the answer would be no.

  "We'll all go," said Shane, deciding quickly.

  "Great. Let's do it," shouted Pags with his usual enthusiasm.

  Shane led the way, and they trekked into the Martian sunset.

  chapter 8

  They walked toward a sunset so red it seemed painted in blood. But by the time they reached the blast site, the crimson sky had turned blacker than any night on Earth. Shane arrived first, and the others followed her lead as she hunched apprehensively behind a sand-molded outcropping of rock.

  Before them lay the wreck of something entirely unfamiliar, still glowing with the heat of its violent descent. Sharp and jagged, it was hard to believe it was something of human design.

  "Could be a Mars orbiter," Shane suggested.

  "Maybe it's a classified recon ship," Wang offered.

  Shane could feel anticipation and fear building in everyone around her. She could feel it welling up inside herself, but she beat it down.

  "Damphousse, West, Walker, Pags—let's move in and take a look. The rest of you spread out and provide cover," she ordered.

  Everyone began to move. Everyone, that is, except for Cooper. He had kept quiet for most of the trek. He had even decided to accept Shane's authority without grumbling about it. But why hadn't she called him to explore the craft as well?

  "You want me to go?" he asked, matter-of-factly, as if perhaps Shane had just forgotten to call his name.

  Shane shook her head. "You stay here," she told him, quietly, "in case something happens."

  Cooper accepted this without further word. He didn't know if it was some sort of punishment for his attitude, or a position of honor. Either way, Cooper had never liked the idea of staying put.

  The others fell out, moving clumsily but quickly in their padded suits. Their M-190 rifles were drawn and aimed at the strange craft. They had no idea what to expect.

  "Radiation levels?" Shane asked Walker. From the quick clicks she could hear coming from his Geiger counter, she didn't really need an answer.

  "Uh, let's just say we don't stay long," said Walker.

  With half the platoon covering them, Shane advanced her group toward the craft. As they got closer they could feel the heat through their thermal suits. Even in the dark, it was clear that the craft was beyond the technology of even the most classified military experiments.

  "What is it?" asked Damphousse.

  They all knew what it had to be, but no one dared say out loud.

  Nathan pushed forward, peering into a huge hole in its hull. There was an angry exhilaration in him now. How far had this thing come? Could it have been at Tellus? Could it have been part of that brutal massacre?

  "I can't see a cockpit or anything," Nathan said.

  There didn't even seem to be a hint of electronics within the hull. Nathan grabbed on to the edge of the hole, preparing to go further inside.

  Above him, something moved.

  Heavy and black, it fell from the darkness above, striking him on the shoulder. Instinctively, he knew it was one of them. An Alien!

  Nathan lurched back and spun around hearing a few gasps in his earpiece, and something else: the clatter of weapons being raised.

  The shock was enough to fill them all with a powerful adrenaline rush. A heavily armored creature lay at Nathan's feet. Even in the inky night, he could tell the creature was not moving. He was the first to raise his flashlight and
shine it at the thing. It was definitely dead.

  The spacesuit it wore betrayed a shape far from human: clawed feet, long taloned fingers, a massive, oversized head, and a sharp protrusion in the center of its chest.

  It was their first glimpse of the enemy.

  Far back, Cooper Hawkes watched, still brooding, barely able to see but hearing the voices in his communicator. When he saw the object fall and the way they had all jumped back, he knew it had to be an Alien. He cursed Shane for not letting him be a part of the action, and watched the hole closely.

  Too closely.

  He had been assigned the job of watching the big picture—of keeping a wide eye open so they'd know if there was any danger. He realized an instant too late that he wasn't looking wide enough.

  BOOM! A blast came from behind the ship—a bright yellow pulse of light that hit Pags in the chest and threw him back ten feet.

  "Pags!" screamed Cooper, as if screaming his name could do anything. He raised his weapon as the platoon scattered, shouting wildly at one another.

  Shane tried to order commands, but the chaos left no room for any sort of sensible response.

  BOOM! BOOM! More blasts—in all directions now. It was an ambush. It seemed like a hundred of the Aliens were surrounding them, shooting.

  But soon it became clear that most of the blasts were coming from their own weapons, pulverizing stone and raising heavy clouds of red dust that added to the confusion.

  As the shooting slowed, a shadow raced out from behind the Alien ship. Despite its huge head and long arms, it was moving impossibly fast.

  The small squadron of Marines could hardly believe their eyes. There was only one Alien, but with a single weapon far more powerful than all of theirs combined. The superpowered gun fired blinding light mortars and left holes in the Martian rock three feet deep.

  Without waiting for Shane's order, the Marines opened fire on the thing, but its armor seemed unaffected by the platoon's blasts.

  Then the Alien took aim at Shane.