Can I, she'd asked Doc, long ago, before the invasion, before the future, when she was young, and testing her limits. Doc answered: the sun will sustain you. You don't need to breathe, or to eat. You are a child of the sun as much as a child of the Earth.
She asked questions about distances and speed, and things she never really wanted to know the answers to. Something about how, in space, she would be so much faster, some theory Henry Winter had about the friction or drag of the atmosphere, the energy loss of forced combustion. None of it was of consequence. All that mattered, Jane thought, was that she could fly into space, fast and true, into the black.
Neal had helped her plot a course, given her a device, now strapped to her wrist, to assist her in finding the Nemesis fleet. She looked at the sun, watching her like a guardian, a mother, her loving light spilled down on her. And then she flew onward, past the moon, the electromagnetic sounds of space singing in her ears like the songs of some alien world.
As she left her planet behind, a blanket of profound loneliness enveloped Jane. So distracted, she did not see the shadowy shape move from behind the moon and creep, silent and prowling, toward the planet.
* * *
The fleet waited for her in the distance as if it knew she was coming, as if it were a single entity, calmly prepared for her arrival. The ships hung suspended in space like modern art, shell-like armor and irregular shapes turning the fleet into a garden of nightmares. She could discern the seed-ships, like javelins, a trio of spears pointed toward Earth, studded with nests of living terraforming machinery. Other ships, barbed and cruel-looking, drifted near the seed-ships, bodyguards against attack, looking like deep sea fish on the offensive.
And poised in the center of the sea of living machines was the brain-ship, the central nervous system of the fleet, staring at her with an eyeless face.
Fighters took notice of her, while she drifted in close and then zipping by them to get a closer look, like wasps protectively buzzing and hovering around their nest. Jane did her best to ignore them, not flinching when one craft flew in too close, and then floating around another that stopped in front of her to block her path.
The brain-ship, the mother ship, turned its attention on her, a cavernous mouth opening as Jane drew close. Inside that mouth, more fighters sat unmoving, strapped into the system through black cabling. Were they resting? Was this where new drones were born? Jane couldn't tell. It looked like a nursery for hornets.
She entered this strange landing bay but did not touch down. Instead, Jane flew, a few inches off the surface, deeper into the vessel, into the shadows, until she came to a place where the walls glowed red and illuminated her way.
Monsters waited for her there, strange aliens with shapes like nightmares. They did not speak, a parasitic creature latched on to each, controlling its movements, controlling its thoughts. These possessed creatures parted as she approached, guiding her inside the brain-ship but not touching her, keeping a respectful, almost reverent distance.
She gazed into each creature's eyes, but only found blankness there, an empty void. Though not in all of them. A few looked at her with a sort of desperation, a helplessness, a pleading request for something, for help, for release. And others displayed a cruel malevolence, something horrible, something hungry, something wanting.
She journeyed deeper into the ship, through pathways like veins, wet and shining corridors, the ground like muscle beneath her heels. It was someone's vision of hell in here, she thought. Somewhere in history or literature a poet had envisioned the afterlife like this, an endlessly dark world, lit in red luminance, demonic and alien beings staring at you from the shadows.
She arrived in a chamber, where more of the varied and strange aliens stood in a circle, parasites glowing brightly on their chests.
Jane waited. No one moved, no one spoke. Just a room of oddities, staring at each other with multifaceted vision, eyes almost human and eyes like some other organ entirely.
"I come representing my world," she said. "I want to speak with you about a peaceful resolution."
The monsters simply watched in silence.
"I know you can understand me," she said calmly. "We realize you take information from us through your scouts. You can speak our languages. Your servants taunted us with it."
The silence was deafening. Jane wondered if this were a wasted trip. Then one of the creatures began to speak, a being with dark green skin, ornate horns growing out of its head, skin covered in scars.
"We know your words," the creature said in a voice that seemed like it had never formed a complete sentence before in its life. The creature's vocal chords sounded more accustomed to screaming, roaring and barking orders. Not this docile discussion about surrender.
"So speak with me," Jane said. "What would it take to turn you away. To bargain for my planet's life."
The alien who spoke paused, eyes growing distant. It occurred to Jane that he was not the one truly speaking—but a conduit for a mind elsewhere on the ship, or elsewhere on the fleet, controlling him through the vile thing latched on to his chest.
"You think we are evil," the alien said.
"I don't know anything about you," Jane said. "Help me understand."
Again, the alien paused, waiting for a signal. And then: laughter. The sound chilled Jane to her guts. Her stomach churn with acid. It was the laugh of a demon.
"You think we are conquerors. You believe us to be greedy," the creature said. "But we are not always the scourge the creatures of light think we are."
"How so?" Jane said, keeping herself loose and ready to move if they attacked her.
"We eat the cancers of the universe," the creature said. "Is that the word in your tongue? Cancers? We eat the rotten places, the ones that will bring destruction and death."
"You're saying you… eat evil worlds?" Jane asked.
Again, a thoughtful delay from the speaker.
"It is our role. You think we are a cancer ourselves, don't you? But we are a carrion creature. We eat the rotten things. The poisons. We wipe the slate clean."
"You can't tell me the Luminae's world was a cancer. All the good they do. All the nobility they have. You can't expect me to believe that," Jane said.
The speaker waited for a signal, and turned its head side to side in an awkward parody of the human gesture.
"No, no, no, they were not poison," the creature said. "But we must eat some worlds to sustain our strength, so that we can devour others that need to die. Some muscle must be sacrificed in order to excise the disease."
"It sounds to me like you're eating everything in your path, good or bad," Jane said. "It seems as if you're making excuses for your gluttony."
The speaker inhaled sharply, bearing sharp yellow teeth.
"We take what we need," it said. "From good worlds and bad. This body I use as a conduit to speak to you. We took him from his world because he represented the best of it. We took him to save him, to incorporate some small part of that now dead place. We do not obliterate. We retain. We save."
"You enslave," Jane said.
"That is a matter of… perspective," the voice said.
Jane's curiosity about who really was using this barbarian-like alien to speak grew stronger.
"So where do we fall on your skewed scale of right and wrong?" Jane said. "Are we a cancer? Or are we special?"
The creature laughed its haunting chuckle again.
"Your world is… unique," the speaker said. "Do you know this? Your world. Your capacity for right and wrong. We have never seen anything like it in all our millennia. You are both the light in the darkness, and the poison in the vein. Your… humanity. If you ever reached the stars, you would ruin everything you touched."
"But we're not just poison?" Jane asked, curious.
"You also have a remarkable capacity for good," the creature said. "You have strength unlike anything we've ever seen. And your world is filled with wonders."
"I doubt you've ever seen a be
tter place," Jane said.
The creature slapped its hands together loudly. Jane watched as the being stood up, nearly seven feet tall, body covered in keloid scars and bone spurs.
"Never in such variety. The creatures of light, the Luminae you call them, their wonder is uniform. Their power is uniform. But your little blue stone, your tiny little world… filled to the brim with wonders. With monsters. With gods. Your world will feed us very well. The variety. We can smell it. We have long waited for an entity like yours. We will never be the same."
"So there's no talking you out of it?" Jane said.
"Nothing has ever stopped us," the speaker said. "We are one. We are might. We are hungry. And we want your world. Your nobility, your savagery, your fear and cowardice and heroism and love. Your world will be the most delicious thing we have ever encountered."
"We won't let you take us," Jane said.
"So you say," the being said. "But you will. We sent our scouts ahead of us. We know what we'll take from you. And we know we must devour the rest. We can never let your people go to the stars."
"We'll stop you," Jane said.
"You'll help us," the creature said. Out of the shadows, one of the parasites skittered forward, a clumsy, quick spider, swaying on its feet as if afraid to stop moving. "You'll join us now, ambassador. We will welcome you into the fold. We wish to know you. We want to have you here with us in the sky."
The parasite pounced, arms outstretched, ready to latch onto Jane and take her mind from her. Jane was prepared, though, and caught the springing creature with one hand. Unhesitating, Jane ignited that hand in a burst of flames and a bright flash of light left the creature exhaling like a lobster cooking in its own skin.
"We know about you as well," Jane said. "And we will not go quietly."
More parasites clattered out of the darkness, hovering around the speaker like guard dogs, hissing and aggressive. They launched themselves at Jane, but she flared her flame powers, sending a burst of fire out around her. Those in the blast radius blackened and shriveled, then dropped to the floor like dead spiders, finger-like limbs curled into loose fists.
The room smelled like burnt flesh, the mindless parasites squealing as superheated air killed them from the inside.
Now, some of the other aliens, the possessed hulking brutes all around her, started to rise from their chairs.
"Such a little trick you have," the beings all said at once, like a chant. "Your little trick, your insignificant little trick."
"I am powered by our star itself, and I tell you true: you will not take my world from me."
One of the unspeaking alien hosts swung a massive, bony fist at her. Jane stepped aside, using the momentum to smash the being's arm over her shoulder, the popping of bone against flesh almost unbearable to watch.
"You think you've won, but you've already lost," the being said. "You never found all our spies. You never learned all our tricks. We have been planning your demise for a very long time, and our warriors strike right now."
"Well then," Jane said, backing away from the slow onslaught of captive warriors. "You won't like when I do this."
She reached up to her neck and snapped the cord of the pedant Doc had given her.
"Feeling victorious, aren't you," Jane said.
"It is our natural state," the speaker said, his peers closing in on her from all sides, a dozen massive, scarred warriors with unknown abilities and physiologies. Jane thought she could stop them on her own, sure, but in such tight quarters, in unknown capacity…
"You'll forgive me if I steal this one from you," she said. She crushed the pendant in her hand, feeling the opal in the center of it split and sever.
The mother-ship chamber glowed blue and white for a moment.
And where Jane once stood, nothing remained.
* * *
Jane reappeared outside the Labyrinth in a flash of light, the air smelled like strange particles of space, nausea and confusion settled in her belly like motion sickness. She fell down onto one knee, resting, more shaken by Doc's teleportation spell than by what transpired on the alien ship.
"Oh, Doc, why didn't you warn me it would feel like this," Jane said, shaking. She touched the earpiece she wore and spoke. "Indestructibles. I'm back. Mission failure. They're not stopping, and they're closer than we thought."
"Jane?" Billy's voice said, sounding strained. "We know they're close—they're already here."
"What?" Jane said. But she looked out to the horizon and saw parts of the City smoking and on fire. "No."
"We're getting this first wave under control," Billy said. "They sent some sort of attack ship—oh, no."
"What, Billy?" Jane said, already heading for the city.
"Look up."
She turned her eyes to the sky. It resembled a painting, something abstract crafted on a plane of blue, but there, pale and ghostly in the sky, the first view of the Nemesis fleet had become visible, a small shape beyond the daylight moon.
"The whole fleet is here," Jane said.
Kate's voice chimed in next, sounding winded and strained.
"We've got this. Get the flyers ready. Do what you have to do, Jane."
Jane nodded, knowing no one would see her. Somehow the gesture felt comforting.
"I'm on my way," Jane said. "We'll head up together."
Chapter 57:
The Battle of the City
Kate watched the attack ship hover in the air above the City's downtown. It fired red bursts of light at the buildings and sent shards of glass and powdered concrete raining down onto the streets below. The ship hung low, perhaps three stories up, a lump of shiny, beetle-like armor.
She got closer and saw a hatch opening up in the flying insect's guts. Shapes formed there, living creatures, and soon they leapt to the ground. Hulking things, varied in shape and form, with the only thing in common the omnipresent parasite latched onto their chests.
The aliens split up and headed in all directions, leaving their vessel to continue their destructive path. Two of them marched right for her. Kate tapped a button on her belt and the Distribution suit hummed to life.
The first creature, a four-legged thing with a face shaped like a bay leaf, reached her first. Though the beast had no eyes, it knew exactly where she was, and galloped toward her like some sort of nightmarish centaur. Kate jumped, sent a knee into what she assumed was its guts. The shot had no effect—his "chest," or whatever the thickly padded surface was she had just kicked, had almost no give to it. Before she could strike again, the alien backhanded Kate sending her sprawling across the street. The blow rattled her teeth.
The Distribution suit whirred louder. Kate smiled viciously and ran back towards the alien, her ears still ringing from his initial blow. He punched again, but this time she let it graze her, allowing the suit to pick up more kinetic energy. Before he took another swing, Kate hit him with a full body, from-her-feet haymaker. The suit fed the punch, sending a kinetic burst through her tungsten-tipped gauntlet when it connected with the parasite on the alien's chest. Host and symbiote lurched backward from the force of the blow, then tumbled, crashing hard and loud into a parked car.
Kate instantly smelled gasoline. She covered her eyes just before the car blew up, engulfing the alien in a feeble cry.
Please tell me the car was empty, Kate thought, tell me there wasn't anyone in it.
The second alien arrived next and smashed Kate's back with two arm-like appendages. The suit absorbed the energy, but she felt the punch all across her ribs, her heart pounding at the sudden pain zapping across her body. She punched the bear-shaped creature in what she thought looked like a kneecap. She'd guessed right, and the monster toppled over awkwardly as its leg gave way to pain.
"What was that?" Titus said through Kate's earpiece.
"Blew up a car," Kate said.
"I thought we were gonna keep collateral damage to a—"
"—Better than knocking him into a convenience store, Titus," she said. "T
hat was a BMW, in case you're wondering."
"Wasn't wondering," he said. "You okay?"
Kate didn't answer. She stole a glance at the car—no human bodies inside, just the burned up corpse of the alien. Kate intentionally let the bear-like creature hit her a few times, blocking the blows with her forearms, absorbing more kinetic energy. She ducked under another swing, punched what seemed to be an elbow—again a good guess—and felt connective tissue and bone crumple under her up-swinging fist. Finally, she head-butted the creature in the nose, hoping to stun him.
Instead, she stunned herself. Her brain rang at the impact. The alien brushed its nose, now streaming with clear fluid. It grabbed hold of her, preventing Kate from getting in a good punch, then knocked her to the ground, before dragging her by her ankle toward its toothy mouth.
Something sharp grazed her hip. She looked down and saw a piece of twisted metal from the car wreck laying on the pavement, long and almost flat, like a sword without a hilt. She snatched it up in her gloved hands, and when the alien pulled her close enough, she stabbed downward—not at the alien itself, but into the parasite, plunging the makeshift weapon inside the crablike creature's body. The parasite shuddered and squealed, a high-pitched whine of pain, then blackish blood poured out from where she'd injured it.
A few seconds later, the parasite's shiny, spider-like limbs loosened, and the creature slid off the chest of its host alien. The bear-shaped creature watched this all unfold, its attack on Kate over, and when the parasite hit the ground, a dead lump of plant-like flesh, it the fell to one knee.
Kate scurried to her feet, prepared to fight, but the alien was finished. It simply looked at its chest where the parasite had just been. Its skin looked burned and infected, raw and painful. The alien placed one squat hand on the wound, and then turned to look at Kate, who readied herself to throw another punch.
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 26