by David Beers
He stepped away from the railing and returned to his office, softly shutting the door behind him. He went to his desk, each movement a clinic in efficiency. He picked up the phone and chose one of the three numbers programmed.
“Sir?” the voice came from the earpiece.
Sir.
Only the military spoke in such ways. The man on the phone probably wasn’t a fan of Kenneth Marks, probably thought Kenneth Marks a bit of a cold fish despite the smiles and warmth always present in his voice. Kenneth Marks used probably when thinking about the General, but that was a mental failing of his own—adapting to the words of his time. He knew the General felt him a cold fish, felt him a dangerous, cold fish. It was the General’s training. Civilians, those outside working like ants, didn’t have that training—the kind that identified threats.
“Hi, General Knox. How are things going?”
“Well, sir. How may I be of service?”
Kenneth Marks’ smile broke out across his face though no one was around to see it. He could turn it on and off like a light, but this was just entirely too much fun.
“Not much for the pleasantries. That’s why I like you, General Knox. A man of business, and the world could use more like you.”
The General said nothing back which made Kenneth Marks’ smile grow just a bit more.
“Okay, okay. I’ll get down to it. Right now you’re receiving information about a town called Grayson. It’s in Georgia. We’ve reached a level five containment and are sending the necessary civilian tools down now, but we will need heavy artillery as well.”
“Level five?” Knox said.
“The number after four and before six, good sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re aware of the protocol for this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there anything you need from me, General Knox?”
A pause came over the line.
“Are you thinking that Presidential pass-codes might be needed for this?” Knox said.
The man was far too smart to use words like nuclear and bomb over a phone line. Presidential pass-codes. Kenneth Marks couldn’t see his own fate yet, there weren’t enough inputs, but he knew he was going to enjoy every moment of this tragedy. Goodness, each moment was just a bit better than the last. Presidential pass-codes? Of course. If the southeastern part of the United States was livable within fifty years, Kenneth Marks would be very, very surprised. There were elements of this, and he didn’t know how they would play out, but that didn’t mean they weren’t all hurtling down train tracks at warp speed heading in the same direction. Maybe they could switch tracks—that’s what Kenneth Marks didn’t know.
“If I’m being honest, General Knox, I think that’s a real possibility. Unless you can get down there and do something about it.”
Silence over the line.
“Yes, sir,” he said finally. “I’m starting preparations immediately.”
“Good, General. I knew I could count on you. I’ll see you soon.”
“You’re coming down, sir?”
He sat down in his chair, leaned his head back, and was perfectly still as he answered. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
77
Present Day
David Jones looked out the window of his jet without much of an idea of why he was doing what he was doing. He had his orders, but that’s all they were—orders. What he was really doing here, flying a damn F-35 over an American city, he didn’t have a clue about. That was okay, he supposed, but he still found it a bit odd. He’d flown over American cities before, of course, but not with the orders he now had.
“Find the target and eliminate it.”
“The target, sir?”
“You will know it when you see it. This is a level five containment. You fly over that marked forest and you’re going to see what you’re looking for. Destroy everything in those woods if you don’t.”
It wasn’t Jones’ job to consider the aftermath of these actions, though if recent (and not so recent) events showed, he could still be held responsible in the aftermath. You didn’t think about that though, not when you neared the city named in your orders. Jones was here to do his job, and he was going to do it—burn down every tree in that forest if need be.
He tilted the nose of the plane down a few degrees so that he could get a clearer view of what he was looking at.
“Holy hell,” he said into the empty plane.
He didn’t know what was happening down there, but he knew immediately why his orders had been so vague. Whatever was happening, you couldn’t miss it. The world looked like it was…caving in on itself.
“This is Hydra One reporting over target. Sir, I’ve sighted the enemy.”
His orders were to destroy the forest if he didn’t find what he was looking for, but without a doubt he saw the enemy, even if Jones didn’t know what in the hell he was actually looking at. Bright orange light burst from the Earth, like a sun erupting from beneath the ground to shine up at him. Large white pipes of some kind shot up out of the ground, and by God, they were grabbing onto the earth as they fell and pulling it back down with them.
Something was digging a fucking hole down there.
He saw a tiny, pearl white shape in the middle, though he couldn’t make out anything else about it.
This was the enemy. The white shape. The white pipes. The goddamn hole growing larger by the minute. Those pipes were reaching out now, past what appeared to be burnt Earth and breaking the world in upon itself. That’s what he had to destroy, the whole damn thing.
“Hydra One, fire at will,” the voice came over his headset.
With goddamn pleasure, he thought, somewhat frightened by what he saw beneath him. He had flown in war zones before, but he understood what he was looking at in all those spots. He didn’t understand this; if he were to stop and think about it, he would realize he didn’t understand how it was even possible.
Jones lowered the plane a few more degrees, positioning himself so that his missiles would lock on and deliver America’s Holy Grace to the mess below. He moved his finger to the trigger, a cold red button. His eyes were focused, deadly so, on what came next.
A second before he fired his weapons, Jones saw the color. His jet passed through it, surrounding his windows and clouding his vision from his target. It was white. A beautiful white, the color of puffy clouds right above a beautiful picnic. The color of kite flying with parents and a puppy brought home on Christmas morning.
Jones’ nose began bleeding, red liquid pouring down his face in wide rivers. Over his lips, into his mouth, and down his chin. His eyes rolled back into his head and his hands began shaking in small, rapid movements. Twitching.
He lost complete control of his plane.
“Hydra One, status.”
“Hydra One, report your status.”
“Jones, what the fuck is happening up there?”
Jones heard none of it. Blood splashed out of his ears as if someone with a pump inside his head had squeezed it out. It didn’t just splash his shoulders, but hit the windows on either side of his seat.
The plane descended in not so much an arc, but more a straight line, like the missiles Jones had planned on letting loose.
* * *
Morena watched the flying object (Plane, Morena. It’s a plane. You know that.) fall to the earth. She knew why it came here: to kill her. She hadn’t needed to do anything to keep it from launching its attack (It shoots missiles, not bullets). Her children shouldered much of the protection. Morena watched as the object went from complete control of itself to spinning as it fell to a fiery end. She lost sight of it as it moved below the tree line, but the noise of its destruction boomed across the forest.
This species wanted her dead. Had wanted her dead from the moment she arrived. From the man showing up to the host’s door, to the very host herself trying to murder Morena. This was what Chilras wouldn’t have been able to handle; a species that want
ed them dead, that would never be content with living side-by-side. Morena would have been happy with either result, but the plane that just fell from the sky told her all she needed to know. Peace would only come through her hand tightening on this planet.
Morena turned her focus to the world around her.
She took it in, all of it, knowing the sanctity of what she was witnessing. No Var, not since the first, had witnessed this, and how long would it be before another Var had such an opportunity? Forever, perhaps. Morena was in the middle of a world’s creation, a peoples’ rebirth. It was beautiful, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The white strands that had lived in the Earth were shooting up all around her, grabbing onto ground and opening up more room for the glorious heat that rested beneath.
Morena stood on a transparent platform, a part of the ship, and felt none of the heat boiling up from beneath.
This core would work, would work for a long, long time. The strands around her would clear the area and then begin solidifying the core’s protection.
This was success.
The trees in front of her caught fire, the green pine needles blackening and orange flames igniting at the trunks. The heat was great and would burn everything it came near, which is how these things were supposed to be; the core’s hole should be solitary, should be something to admire, and nothing around it would grow.
This was success.
Men ran. Morena saw them from her place in the center of this masterpiece. Their clothes caught fire the same as the trees. They wouldn’t make it out; they wouldn’t be able to run faster than her strands were pulling the earth in on itself. She felt no ill will towards them. None at all. In fact, standing here with her aura growing, she pitied them. They were little more than mindless animals, trying to escape danger.
Others would come. The government, as Bryan had called them. The government would come in full force now, which was fine. Her power grew with each passing second, and she felt what she once was returning. A Var, not an inhabitant of someone else’s body. Not a guest of a planet, but a ruler of one. This government, or anyone else, could show up here and try to stop her. It didn’t matter.
Humanity had their time on this planet, but it was over. The people catching alight now were symbols of the rest of the species. They would first try to stop her and then they would run, but in the end, they would all bend the knee to her power. To the power of Bynimian.
You have to name this place, Morena.
The thought struck her as humorous, though true. The planet had been called Earth, but that was by another species.
What would you call a new home?
The flames licked higher and higher into the trees and she began to hear the screams of men burning. Men. That’s what they called themselves, while Morena was a Bynum.
Not yet, she thought. Soon. The name would come; there wasn’t any reason to rush it. Let the humans come first. The government and the rest of humanity. Let them try to kill her and her children, then let them come and let them see that their time is over.
Morena watched as the fire blazed all around her; she watched, full of hope.
78
A Long Time Ago, In Another Place
Morena watched her husband enter the room. He walked alone, just as she had, shuffling to the invisible cell that would hold him next to her.
An aura wrapped around his wrists and ankles, an orange that clashed brightly with his natural red. The aura kept him from moving his hands, or from doing anything more than the awkward shuffle that looked like the slaves Morena had seen on other planets, as they were walked back and forth from their daily work. A slave. That’s what her husband had been reduced to, she as well. Another of those orange auras wrapped around his neck, preventing him from looking anywhere but straight ahead.
It was unnecessary. Briten would never lower his eyes for anyone. Not even her. His head would be held high even as he shuffled into this prison created by much lesser beings.
The only sign that Briten entered his cell was the dissipation of the orange auras, freeing him to move again.
Morena looked at him and he at her.
Neither said anything for a few seconds.
Happiness filled her just at seeing him. She couldn’t hide it from her aura, the green spreading through her own cell.
“How are you?” he asked.
She smiled. “You’re here and that’s better than before.”
“Well, we’re both here now; are you sure you made the right decision?” He was smiling back at her and that’s why she loved him. They were in neighboring cells with no chance of escape and yet he looked at her as if they were in their palace, perhaps bathing underneath lights on a terrace.
“I might have done a few things different, I suppose,” Morena said and laughed.
Neither of them spoke for a few moments after that.
“So what are they going to do with us?” Briten said.
“Death. They’ll have some kind of mock court and in the end both of us will be sentenced to die.”
“The first Var to be put to death. Do you think your mother saw that once she knew we would marry?” Briten lay down on the white floor, his red spreading out across the ground, resembling a cloud made of the tiniest blood particles.
“I don’t know. My mother’s Knowledge was strong. She might have.”
“And yet she let you marry me?”
Morena lay down too, her aura wrapping around her and not spreading out as her husband’s.
“Knowledge is just that. Knowledge of how things will work out. It doesn’t allow you to change it.”
“She never told you though? What would happen?” Briten said.
“No, of course not.”
“Why?”
Morena turned her head to him and watched as he stared straight upward. “Because it is my life. If you knew what was to become of me, would you tell me, or would you let me continue to make my own decisions?”
It didn’t matter that they were in these cells. They were together. It didn’t matter that death might be waiting a short day or two from now. They were together. Had anyone else been here with her, none of that would be true. With Briten though, reality didn’t always have to matter.
He didn’t say anything for a few minutes and Morena just looked on, watching his aura dance. Loving it. Loving him.
“Are you ready to die?” he said.
“No.”
“Do you think we will?”
A twinge of Knowledge had been pulling at her about this. It was why she promised the Assistant what she had. She wouldn’t have made that promise if she didn’t think she could deliver on it. Unfortunately, she felt no more than a twinge, a slight tug that said this wasn’t quite over yet.
“No,” she said.
“Why not? Knowledge?”
“Yes, somewhat. I think something is going to present itself; we just have to be ready to grab it when we see it.”
Briten’s aura began flowing up the sides of the cell, illuminating the room, turning the transparent views to red tinged.
“I’ve lived here in peace since I found you,” he said. “I’ve taken your customs and those of your planet. I’ve followed you and heeded your counsel. I love you, Morena. I love you more than my own life, so if I die in the next few days, I won’t regret any of my decisions.”
Morena said nothing, just watched his aura begin touching the ceiling as it filled the cell. It was mesmerizing, hypnotizing even, the way it spread in such a calm and sure method.
“I’m done with that though, Morena, if you tell me to be. You know my people, my breeding. If you tell me to grab whatever it is you see, and to hold onto it, I’ll bring down this planet to hold onto it. You just tell me to grab it.”
Morena closed her eyes.
“When I tell you, wreck everything.”
* * *
“Thank you for gracing us with your presence again, Veral,” Morena said as she looked at the Hindran’s Assi
stant.
Briten wasn’t standing, but sitting in the middle of his cell, his aura tightly wrapped around himself. His eyes were closed and his head held level and still. Morena stood at the edge of her cell, her own green aura whipping around as if a violent wind tore through the room.
She looked away from the Assistant to Chilras.
“The Council has decided you will sit before them tomorrow,” the old Bynum said.
“And Briten?”
“He will be there too, of course. You’re co-conspirators in this.”
“What do you consider yourself in all of this, Hindran? An innocent victim?” Morena said.
“I’m what separates Bynimian from chaos.”
Morena laughed, looking up the white ceiling. “And I am that chaos?”
“You attempted to be.”
“Have you once asked yourself why I did what I did? Why I was willing to throw away all of our customs and laws?” Morena said, looking back to the Hindran.
“For him.” The Hindran gestured to Briten, whose eyes remained closed.
“You’re serious? You think I’ve sentenced us to death so that he could…what? Save face because his recommendation wasn’t acted on?”
“It doesn’t matter, Morena. It doesn’t matter why. It matters that you did it. That’s all,” Veral said from slightly behind Chilras.
Morena slowly glanced in his direction. “Did you just call me by my name?”
“You’re no longer Var,” he said.
Morena smiled, small and subtle. “Do you think Var is a title? That I can be stripped of my bloodline simply because the old Bynum next to you says it is so? For someone in such an esteemed position, you may be the simplest creature I’ve ever met.”
The Assistant said nothing.
Morena turned her eyes back the Hindran.
“And what kind of trial or judgment can I expect, do you think, Chilras? Impartial, fair? Given the people judging us are the ones I imprisoned?”