The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (30 page)

Chapter
55:

As
above, so below

Billy, Bedlam, Seng, Doc, Valkyrie and
Korthos watched the monitor, a split screen in the control room. On one side,
they saw the brightly glowing shell of the attack ship heading for the City, on
a collision course for downtown.

      But on the other screen was a feed
from an Earth satellite pointing out into space. And there, in the distance,
they spied the writhing monstrosity that was the Nemesis fleet.

      "We've got to head up there,"
Doc said.

     
The first ship is a
distraction,
Dude said in Billy's ear.
They want us to pay attention to
a small ground force so that we're not prepared for the rest of the fleet. We
got lucky spotting them.

      "Dude says this is a
distraction," he repeated. He couldn't stop staring at Doc.

      Doc sent an irritated expression
in Billy's direction.

      "What?" Doc said.

      "I'm sorry, I'm just trying
to adjust to… you," Billy said.

      Doc had swapped out his usual
jeans and long black coat for a form-fitting costume, a black and gray suit
with a long black cape, a full mask hung around his neck. The suit had been
treated for the vacuum of space, and Billy understood Doc's reasons for swapping
his outfit, but seeing their mentor dressed basically in spandex, in the face
of an alien invasion, was profoundly disturbing to him.

      "This is really your biggest
concern right now?" Doc said.

      "Hey man, you're wearing
tights. It
is
disturbing," Bedlam said.

      Korthos, let out a rumbling laugh.
"I profess, when you stopped wearing that getup in the early days I was
supremely relieved," he said.

      "Forget it," Doc said. "Battle
plan. Kate, are you online?"

      "We're both here," Kate
said.

      "Where's Emily?" Billy
said.

      "I'm listening!" Emily
said, her location still a mystery.

      "What are you doing, Em? This
is kind of important right now," Billy said.

      "I'll be there when you need
me, cupcake, cool your jets," Emily's disembodied voice said.

      "The plan," Doc said. "Bedlam,
you'll rendezvous with Kate and Titus and handle the ground assault. We expect
that ship is going to dump some foot soldiers on the City and we need them
neutralized."

      "Got it," Bedlam said.

      Doc turned an eye to Val, who
watched him with a gentle, neutral expression.

      "Are you up for this?"
Doc said.

      "I will be," Val said.

      "Okay. You're powers are only
going to be effective here with an atmosphere to work with, so you'll be air
support for Kate's team. Are you comfortable with that?"

      Val's eyes glowed a deep, electric
blue.

      "This is my world," she
said. "I'll do anything you need."

      "The storm goddess will be
fine," Korthos said, stroking his midnight-blue beard. "I see a
warrior in her."

      "Right," Billy said. "Thanks
for the color commentary, Beowulf. The rest of us are heading up into space?"

      "We'll be the first line of
defense," Doc said. "You all must hold back for my signal. I've got
something big planned and can only do it once. But hopefully it'll start us on
the right foot."

      "I'll anxiously await your
performance, war wizard," Korthos said.

      "Seriously, this guy,"
Billy said.

      Korthos shot him a vile look.

      Billy smiled sheepishly back.

      "I can provide some advice as
we head up," Seng said. "I engaged the fleet once before. I couldn't
stop them, but I know some of their weak points, and a few of their tactics."

      "What should we be looking
for, Seng?" Doc asked the alien.

      Seng walked up to the screen and
pointed to some of the larger structures visible in the blurry video of the
fleet.

      "The fighters will provide
cover, but we need to stop the seed-ships," he said, pointing to the
spear-like machines. "If those make Earthfall, they will immediately begin
to terraform the planet. The destruction they'll cause in hours may be more
than the planet can recover from even if we're able to defeat the entire fleet."

      "Which is unlikely,"
Billy said.

      "Aren't you a ball of
sunshine today," Bedlam said.

      "We shall be victorious,
little shiny one," Korthos said, thumping his chest. "Fear not!"

      Billy found himself staring
blankly at the warrior god, completely unsure how to respond.

      "Is there some sort of mother
ship you could hit?" Kate's voice chimed in. "Cut the head off the
beast?"

      Seng gestured to one central
shape, bigger than the rest, its features unclear.

      "This. Their brain-ship. All
others receive orders from it," Seng said.

     
But we'll never get close
enough,
Dude said.
We're better off focusing on the seed ships first.

      "Dude's being a pessimist and
says we'll never hit it," Billy said.

      "Straylight is correct,"
Seng said. "Every ship in that feet will die to protect the brain-ship."

      "So we know our first
targets," Doc said. "Billy, Seng, you're the fastest. You'll run
interference after my alpha strike. Korthos?"

      "I shall break everything in
my sight," Korthos said. "My axe will—"

      "Right, Korthos smash,"
Emily said, cutting him off.

      Korthos looked around the room for
her. "Distance makes you brave, little sprite," he said.

      "You're wearing a kilt,"
Emily said. "You're automatically ten points less scary dressed like that."

      Korthos fumed but said nothing.

      Billy almost laughed at the idea
of Emily shutting the big guy down with a jab. But then he remembered
something. "What about Jane?" he asked.

      "She's out there somewhere,"
Doc said, his voice strained with worry. "We just have to hope she's close
enough to help."

      "And not dead," Emily
said solemnly.

      No one spoke.

      Emily broke the silence.

      "What? Nobody else was
thinking it? I don't know about you guys but after our time travel thing it's
like all I
can
think about."

      As if on cue, a new and welcome
voice interrupted the meeting. Billy felt a smile of relief break out on his
face, but seeing the look of pure joy on Doc made him feel even better.

      "Indestructibles," Jane's
voice said through the speakers. "I'm back. Mission failure. They're not
stopping, and they're closer than we thought."

      "Jane?" Billy said. "We
know they're close—they're already here."

Chapter
56:

Among
the stars

The night she left Earth, the same night
Kate and Titus had their run-in with Prevention, Jane flew straight up into the
sky and beyond, leaving the Earth behind. She felt the atmosphere cling to her,
like a hand pleading with her to stay. But a few moments later, as if passing
through a soap bubble, she crossed beyond the stratosphere and felt, for the
first time, the unadulterated rays of the sun splash against her skin.

      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
better 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…