"Addy, shut up."
"Or maybe a giant banana statue that's saying: 'I find you a-peeling.'"
"Addy, I'm going to bury you in a statue right now if you don't shut up."
They reached the mechas. Addy shot barnacles and clay off the female mecha, found an airlock, and entered it. Marco returned to the male mecha. As he took the elevator up to the head, he found himself humming "The Girl from Ipanema." Damn Addy getting her damn elevator music stuck in his head.
He reached the control room in the mecha's head. He couldn't begin to comprehend all the monitors, panels, and holograms that filled the place. He would have to learn on the fly. He approached the exoframe that stood in the center of the room—a metal suit roughly his size.
He climbed in.
Once his four limbs were in place, the suit tightened around him, bits and pieces snapping into place. Marco wasn't a large man, but Taolians weren't very large either, and the suit adjusted to fit perfectly. A helmet closed snugly around his head, and for a moment, all his senses vanished.
He floated in silent darkness. Held within the suit, he even felt weightless. Marco had heard of sensory deprivation tanks. This felt similar, the losing of the senses.
Yet all our senses sit atop awareness, he thought. I learned that from Mahanisha. In here, I am pure consciousness.
And then, slowly, a world began to wake up.
At first, his sense of touch—dryness to his skin, like scabs covering his body. Then his hearing—the muffled sounds of water, the songs of whales, the scurrying of fish. His sight remained dark, but many other senses awoke. His sense of weight—massive now. His sense of balance, of being. The feelings of his limbs, as long as starships. The heat in his belly, engines awakening, gears turning.
He was Marco. But he was also Kaiyo the mecha. He was this ancient god.
And he could move.
At first, movement was hard. He was embalmed like Ling, engulfed in clay and barnacles. But his muscles awoke from their ancient slumber. No, not muscles—gears and working pistons and grumbling engines. He moved one arm, and chunks of clay shattered and fell to the seabed. He raised one leg, tearing free from his bonds. He shook his head, and clay shards fell, revealing the sea.
He saw the second mecha ahead. Addy was operating the machine, tearing off the layers of clay, revealing a goddess in golden armor. Kaji shone in the water, tall and proud, gazing with the face of a lioness. In her hand, she held a mighty sword.
Her voice filled Marco's head.
"Hey, dumbass."
Marco took a step across the seabed. The water swirled around him. He raised one of his massive hands, large enough to crush a car, and waved. Fish scattered and water swirled.
"Hey, dingbat," he said.
The female mecha stepped forward too, tearing her colossal feet out from the clay. Addy spoke again, her voice emerging from speakers in Marco's helmet.
"Finally, you're no longer short!" she said.
"I'm just amazed you squeezed into that mecha, what with all the hot dogs you've been scarfing down," Marco said.
"Shut up and let's fly." Addy paused. "So, Poet—how do we fly these things?"
"You didn't read the manual?" Marco said.
She snorted. "Poet, the only books I've ever read are yours and Freaks of the Galaxy. And I skimmed through the boring parts of yours."
"Hey!"
"Well, your books need more freaks in them!"
Marco groaned. "I'll make you the main character in the next one."
"That's more like it."
He took a deep breath. Flying. How did one fly this machine? He explored with his awareness, moving it across his body—and the body of the mecha. Under Baba Mahanisha's tutelage, Marco had spent many hours scanning his body, moving his consciousness from toes, to calves, to knees, letting each part exist in awareness while the rest faded. He found that now, using the same technique, he could explore the mecha—using nothing but his awareness. That awareness was like a little passenger moving through the great machine, observing. Using this technique, he could access the control center around him, could pull up information. Holographic displays appeared before him, but the language was foreign. Even if he could find the user manual here, he couldn't read it.
But if I can explore this machine with my awareness, move its limbs with my awareness, why not fly?
He raised his chin. He gazed upward toward the surface of the water.
Fly.
Deep inside him, engines rumbled.
Jets extended from his back; he saw them in the holographic diagrams.
Fire blazed.
And he flew.
His head burst from the sea, dripping water and seaweed. His engines grew hotter, and soon he was soaring—a massive machine, as large as humanity's largest warships. He blasted through the sky. Numbers and speedometers flashed before him in a foreign language. He soared through clouds. The roar and clattering was deafening. He felt like a pea inside a shaken can. His joints ached. He felt his awareness fading, moving back from the machine into his own small body.
"Woo! Poet!" Addy laughed. "Poet, I can see you! We're doing it! We're flying!"
Marco saw her. She was soaring nearby, body straight as an arrow, arms held upward.
"I feel sick!" he shouted over the roaring engines.
"Hold your hands up like me! Pretend you're Superman. Your body's too crooked."
As his suit kept rattling, Marco raised one arm, then the other. He pressed his hands together like a diver, then pushed his legs together and rose onto his toes. He kept his body—and by extension, the mecha's body—as flat as possible.
The rattling eased. He flew faster, smoother. He and Addy soared together.
They burst out from the atmosphere into open space, and the stars spread around them.
They kept flying, freeing themselves from Taolin Shi's pull. They flew through space, side by side, two ancient gods.
"For the first time in centuries, Kaiyo and Kaji fly," Marco whispered. "The dead have risen again."
"And these machines will fight," Addy said. Her golden mecha gazed at Marco, sword in hand. "We will fight. We will fight the grays and anyone else who dares attack us. Poet, we are now the greatest warriors Earth has known. And it's time to go home."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ben-Ari lay in her hospital bed, sipping chamomile tea, watching the news on her small television set.
A reporter was interviewing a mustached colonel. They stood in the devastation of Mongolia, and the camera panned across the battlefield, showing the husks of tanks, chariots, saucers, and starfighters.
The reporter spoke, voice solemn. "Was it here, Colonel, on this very field, that Major Einav Ben-Ari opened a black hole and sucked in the grays?"
The colonel harrumphed. "I cannot discuss what military tactics the HDF utilizes. Suffice to say that Major Ben-Ari's actions turned the tide of the battle. Bear in mind there are still sporadic battles breaking out across the globe, but the HDF is handling the threat. In Eastern Europe, our artillery division has been—"
The reporter interrupted. "Colonel, is it true that Major Ben-Ari nearly destroyed the planet? Opening a black hole in the middle of—"
Ben-Ari switched the channel. But the next station was showing a news report too. An image of her appeared on the screen. A caption below it read: Major Ben-Ari: Heroine or Madwoman?
She flipped the channel again. Every station was reporting on the war. She had fought in the epicenter, but the grays had invaded other locations on Earth too. Some violence still raged, but the HDF was gaining ground quickly. The battle was won.
But the war, Ben-Ari knew, was only beginning.
She thought of the vision Abyzou had shown her. Pain stabbed her.
She grimaced and glanced at her stump. It was wrapped in bandages, and a morphine drip was taming the pain. But she still felt a phantom arm. Still felt it crushed.
She looked away. Finally she found a channel showing so
mething other than war coverage. She spent a blissful ninety minutes watching Lost in Love, a romantic comedy about a couple marooned on a tropical planet. Her favorite part was their pet monkey.
This is the first time I've gotten to relax in years, Ben-Ari thought. All I had to do was save the world three times and get my arm chopped off.
A knock sounded on her door. She placed aside her cup of tea, expecting another visit from her nurse.
"Come in!"
But the visitor was a stranger, a tall man wearing a black suit, a black tie, and black sunglasses. He surveyed the room, pulled out a sensor, and swept it across the walls.
"Are you looking for rodents?" Ben-Ari said. "Or are you ghost hunting? I'm not sure about mice, but by the way it creaks, I could swear my bed is haunted."
The man silently retreated from the room.
A moment later, another man entered.
Ben-Ari smiled.
"Mister President."
President James Petty still looked horribly uncomfortable in a suit and tie. He had worn only military uniforms for four decades, had risen to command fleets. Today he commanded the world.
He looks handsome in a suit, she thought. Though I'll never convince him to lose his military buzz cut.
"Einav!" Petty held out a bouquet. "For you."
"Flowers?" She scoffed. "You should have brought me chocolates!"
He seemed flustered for a moment, but Ben-Ari laughed, and he smiled. It was so rare to see him smile.
He sat down by her side, and now his smile faded. "Einav, talk to me. You fought these creatures in the darkness. You studied them. You were inside one of their ships. Tell me everything. Tell me what we're facing."
Her head spun. She was weary. She was so weary. The morphine was wearing off, and she pressed the button on her dispenser, releasing another boost. She sighed in relief. It was good stuff. Almost as good as chamomile.
Through the haze of painkillers, she spoke to Petty.
She told him everything she knew.
She spoke of Yarrow, a green, lush world, of visiting a colony of hardy farmers missing its children.
She spoke of flying to a cruel desert world, a harsh land where a pyramid soared. Monks lived there, worshiping Nefitis, an ancient Egyptian goddess. She told Petty how she had found Yarrow's missing children there—children that seemed a hundred years old, inflicted with progeria. Children the monks had used as guinea pigs in their time machine. A time machine they were building to return to Egypt, to hear Nefitis speak.
Voice steady, she told Petty how she had destroyed that time machine, destroyed the monks' starships, and marooned them on their desert world. No technology. No way to leave. Their secret lair had become their prison.
And she told Petty what happened next. What she had learned.
"Over the next million years, the monks evolved on their desert planet. They grew taller. Smarter. Stronger. They became the grays. From among them rose a queen, wretched and cruel. They finally invented their time machine. It took them a million years, but they finally invented it. Their queen traveled back in time to ancient Egypt, revealing herself to the Egyptians. She became Nefitis, the goddess the monks worshiped. A self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way. She formed a circle in time."
Petty listened silently the whole time. Finally he spoke. "And now the grays—these evolved humans from the future—want Earth. Our Earth."
Ben-Ari nodded. "A million years from now, Earth is destroyed. A wasteland. Inhospitable to life. The gray I captured aboard the Lodestar told me. Earth only lasts another thousand years from the present day before pollution destroys it." She sighed. "So the grays came here. Using their time machine. To take our world. To make it their own. They were human once. They see Earth as their birthright."
Petty frowned. "Why Earth now, then? Why an Earth that's already polluted, that's already filled with an army that can resist them? Why not travel back to the days before humans even existed? Or if they want slaves, why not travel back to ancient Egypt again, where they'd face swords and arrows instead of cannons and starfighters?"
"Because they can't," Ben-Ari said. "Not anymore. Not since I marooned the monks. If the grays conquered Earth a million years ago, or a thousand years ago, or even just one year ago—I wouldn't be around to maroon the monks. And the monks wouldn't have evolved into grays. If they conquered Earth before their exile, they would blink out of existence. So they came now. To a time when Earth is still reeling from two galactic wars, a time when we're weak."
Petty nodded. "All right. So time travel is possible. So we figure it out. We travel back in time and prevent you from marooning the monks. Hell, we can just go to those monks now. They're only a few months into their exile. We kill them. We stop their evolution. We—"
"We can't," Ben-Ari said softly. "The grays were too clever. They placed themselves in our past. They landed in Area 51 and Roswell. They landed in ancient Egypt and helped build the pyramids. They attacked me in space, and I captured one on my ship—never knowing it allowed itself to be captured." She sighed. "If we kill the monks now, yes, we'd prevent them from evolving into the grays. Which means Area 51, Roswell, and all those other events will not have happened. Which creates paradoxes in our lives. Which can unravel spacetime itself, more thoroughly and dangerously than my wormhole generator. It could undo Earth." She shook her head. "No, James. We can't kill the monks. We can't undo this. It's too late. Professor Isaac taught me something. That you can't change the past. We must look only to the future."
"And what lies in our future?" Petty said. "What do these creatures plan now?"
She propped herself up in bed, felt woozy, and lay back down. She glanced at the timer of her morphine dispenser. The damn thing was locked for another hour.
"Another invasion," she said weakly, trying to ignore the pain, the dizziness. "A hundred times stronger than the assault they already hit us with. Before he died, Abyzou showed me . . . a vision. A glimpse into his world. I saw gray armies. A huge fleet. They plan to hit us again. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Professor Isaac told me that it's dangerous to open such large rifts in time so close together. But sooner or later—maybe in a year, maybe in only a month—the grays will open another portal. And they will attack again. And they will hit us harder than we've ever been hit."
Petty stared at her in horror. "We have no warships left. Earth is undefended. Even if we have a year, it's not enough time."
"We have one ship," Ben-Ari said. "We have the Lodestar." She propped herself up in bed, ignoring the pain in her phantom limb. "Why did you send her away, James? During the attack, you said you had a mission for my ship. You sent her fleeing from battle. Why?"
Petty stepped toward the window. He gazed outside. They had given Ben-Ari a room with a view of the Pacific, and Petty spent a while gazing at the ocean. Finally he spoke.
"I sent the Lodestar away to serve her original purpose." He looked back at her. "She was never meant to be a ship of war. She's a ship of HOPE, the Human Outreach Program for Exploration, not the Human Defense Force."
Ben-Ari nodded. "I know. You built her for exploration. But you also gave her weapons. Because you knew that someday I might need them. And I did. We all did."
"For exploration?" Petty nodded. "Yes, I suppose. That was part of it. That was how I could enlist famous scientists such as Noah Isaac and that long-haired Alien Hunter. But the Lodestar's true purpose, Einav, is diplomacy."
Ben-Ari smiled thinly. "You might have noticed that my idea of diplomacy is charging headfirst into a hostile fleet, getting my arm chopped off, and then activating a doomsday device to slaughter a hundred thousand of my enemies."
"A useful skill at times," said Petty, struggling to stifle his own smile. "Yet the Lodestar is the last of our major starships. When the grays attack again, she cannot hold them off herself. We need to enlist aid. We need to join the Galactic Alliance."
The Galactic Alliance. Yes, Ben-Ari had heard of it. Humanity had discov
ered that distant league of civilizations only last year. It had barely made the news, not with the gray assaults, but she had been listening.
Ben-Ari pushed herself up in bed, winced in pain, and lay back down. "James, we're not nearly advanced enough. The Galactic Alliance? We'd be like a gorilla asking for a seat in the zoo's boardroom."
"Then this gorilla better put on a suit," Petty said, uncomfortably adjusting his tie. "Einav, the Galactic Alliance is the premier peacekeeping force in the Milky Way. Every spacefaring civilization worth its salt is a member. They have powerful pacts of protection. If any hostile race—creatures like the scum, marauders, or even the grays—attacks one member, the rest of the Galactic Alliance is sworn to defend that member. If we can join the alliance, we'd have powerful allies. When the grays attack again, they would not be attacking Earth alone. They'd be attacking a member of the GA. They'd be incurring the wrath of a mighty organization with massive fleets. That is how we defeat the grays. Earth cannot fight alone. We need allies."
Ben-Ari sighed. "I don't know, James. The Galactic Alliance accepts civilizations far more advanced than ours. Their members have built Dyson spheres around their stars. They have colonies on many star systems. We humans have only a handful of colonies. We barely have any ships left. What do we have to offer them?"
Petty smiled. "We have Captain Einav Ben-Ari."
"Not even all of her, not now." She glanced at her missing arm and winced. The phantom limb still ached. Why the hell wasn't more morphine available?
"The Lodestar is idling right now on the edge of the solar system, undergoing repairs. She'll soon be ready to fly into interstellar space again. While you recover, Commander Isaac will captain the Lodestar. He will lead the starship to the Galactic Alliance headquarters, where he will present our application for membership, and—"
"No." This time Ben-Ari forced herself to sit up. She stared into the president's eyes. "I'm going. The Lodestar is my ship. I will lead her on this mission."
He placed a hand on her shoulder. "Einav. You're hurt. You lost an arm. You—"
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