The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (38 page)

Chapter
71:

Like
shooting stars

Jane felt cold.

Never in her life had she been cold.
Since her first waking moments, for as long as she had conscious memories, she
had been enveloped in warmth, the glow of the sun, the comfort of daylight. Her
cells drank in the sun and held onto it, fed her and made her strong.

      She was a child of the sun.

      In the blackness of space, her
body depleted to its core, that solar energy, that glow, disappeared. She felt
every ache and pain. Her joints hurt. Her skin felt wrinkled and dry. Her hair,
drifting in front of her face without purpose, without fire, looked like anyone
else's, dull. Still red and gold, but now simply hair, not the living, dancing
flames that the world had become accustomed to when seeing her.

      She drifted on nothingness,
surrounded by a cloud of ash, the results of giving up her gift, of pouring the
sunlight that was her blood into the destruction of the seed ship.

      She watched helplessly as her
friends struggled in the distance. She saw Billy glow like a comet, a firefly dancing
on the vapors of space.

      Jane turned her head to see the
weird marvel that was Emily manipulate the world's biggest toy. Jane saw the
seed ship plummet toward the sun, and the explosion that followed. She wished
her earpiece hadn't burned out during the fight. She wanted to know if Emily
was okay. Her vision, usually superhuman, had dulled to an ordinary person's,
or worse, as the world faded and blurred.

      I've never been so tired, she
thought. When she'd been locked up in the Labyrinth, denied access to the sun,
she'd been weak, she'd been weary, but not like this, not this empty, crushing
exhaustion.

      The sun stared back at her, gold
and endless. Jane reached out a hand toward the burning globe, appalled at how
gray her skin looked, how wrinkled her fingers had become. Am I dying?

      She watched the sunlight play
between her fingers. I am a child of the sun. I don't know how this happened. I
don't know where I came from, not really. But I know your light. Sunlight was
my mother's milk. Sunlight is my family's love. Everything I've ever done, I
have been able to do because of you.

      Don't leave me, Jane thought. She
stretched her fingers toward Earth's yellow star. I'm not finished yet. There's
still so much more I need to do.

      The sun's warmth touched her palm
like a soft breath. Her heart beat a little faster. She spread her fingers, and
sparkles of light danced around her fingertips, cells reigniting. In the vacuum
of space, she turned, closed her eyes, and let sunlight, unfiltered and pure,
splash across her face.

      Her strength started to return.
Color painted her skin. The pain washed away. Her heart raced, and her muscles
felt fluid and strong.

      Thank you, she thought. Thank you
for giving me one more chance. I promise I'll make you proud.

      The fleet renewed its attack on
Earth, a thousand ships bent on destroying her home world. She watched the
Tower—it's a space ship, Jane thought, we've always lived in a space ship, how
easy it is to forget the wonder of it—head toward the brain ship, aimed at one
last seed ship, one last attempt to ruin their planet. It had to be Kate. Kate
always has a plan. I knew I could count on her. She'll never let us down.

      Jane's stomach churned at the sheer
enormity of the fleet, even without a cadre of seed ships. The hunger of it,
the hatred of it. It's too much for us, Jane thought. We're strong, we're
brave, but it's too much for us to defeat by ourselves.

      And then, as if answering a
prayer, she saw them.

      Streaking across the sky like
shooting stars. A dozen, maybe more, blue-white bolts of light, just like Billy's
light. Luminae. They had to be.

      And Jane remembered what Billy
said. The old man, Horizon, had gone for help. To save our world.

      The Luminae joined Billy and Seng,
dashing through the Nemesis fleet, a squadron of comets. We're not alone, Jane
thought. She clenched her hands into fists and lit herself up, surrounding her
body in the flames of the sun.

      It's time to end this.

      Jane, the solar-powered girl, dove
into the fray, to defend her world, the warmth of the sun bright and strong at
her back.

Chapter
72:

Brothers
in arms

Billy felt a little overwhelmed. Not
worrying about the null guns had been a big relief, but the weapons the alien
fighters were throwing at him didn't exactly tickle, and the way they were all
pursuing him right now reminded him of photos he'd seen of the Beatles when they
first came to America. Crowds chasing the moptops down the street in black and
white photos.

      Only instead of being a rock star,
Billy was a target, and instead of screaming fans, he was being pursued by
hundreds of angry alien space ships through the upper atmosphere of Earth's
sky.

      A few moments before, Seng had broken
off in another direction. Billy hoped the other Luminae host was okay. He didn't
possess Billy's protection against the null guns, but then again, Seng also had
years more combat experience than Billy. Maybe that translated into being a
better dodge ball player Billy thought.

      Doc's spells flashed all around
him, always just in range of Billy's peripheral vision. Whatever the old
magician was doing, it helped, because Billy heard the explosions, but still…

      Just when he started to feel his
strength flag, the space around him grew warmer, and suddenly a burst of flames
behind him, scattered his pursuers. Smiling triumphantly, Jane banked around to
catch up with him.

      "Glad you're not dead,"
Billy said. "Why are you smiling?"

      "Look up, goofball,"
Jane said.

      Billy twisted so that he was
facing back out into space, away from the planet. When he saw them, he started
to laugh.

      "The old man did it!"
Billy said. "He actually got help!"

     
I knew he wouldn't fail,
Dude said.
Horizon would never let us down.

      The other Luminae were too far
away to make out clearly, but it had to be Suresh and his allies. Who else
could it be? They boldly tore through the back end of the fleet, diminishing the
Nemesis armada's overwhelming numbers, clearing a path to the Earth.

      "We should—"Billy
started, but Jane was a step ahead of him.

      "You take the left, I'll get
the right?" she said.

      "You got it."

      They split apart, each taking half
of Billy's pursuers with them. Billy lifted up, leading them away from the
Earth's atmosphere, toward… something, a tangled mass of wreckage near the
moon. No, not just wreckage, a ball of combat with Korthos in the middle, that weird
loincloth-wearing-Tazmanian-Devil-whirlwind-of-destruction.

      "Hey big guy, coming at you!"
Billy said.

      'Bring forth more of thy enemies,
little glowing man!" Korthos yelled into his earpiece, making Billy's ear
ring. "I shall smite them all!"

      "Get ready to smite like you've
never smote before!" Billy yelled. He and the immortal man met in
mid-flight. Nemesis ships crashed into each other unable to bank away in time,
and the rest began to fall from Korthos's axe and Billy's blasts of light.

      One of the other Luminae hosts
broke free from their attack pattern and headed straight for Billy. He wasn't
surprised when he saw the man approaching him.

      Suresh, white hair even crazier
and more out of place than the last time Billy saw him, flew up alongside and
put a hand on his shoulder.

      "Told you I'd be back,"
Suresh said.

      "I don't think you made any
promises," Billy said.

      "Well, let me tell you
something, son. Those guys up there, they've been waiting for this,"
Suresh said.

      "For us?"

      "For the chance to help a
planet that was fighting back," Suresh said. "They're all survivors
of dead worlds. And they've wanted payback for a very long time."

      "Y'know, before you came
along, I thought I was unique," Billy said.

      "Sorry about that,"
Suresh said, breaking away to take on another wing of Nemesis ships. "We
all start out that way."

      He saluted Billy and winked,
heading back out, a gleeful look on his face.

      "Was he always like this?"
Billy said.

     
Horizon always did have odd
taste in hosts,
Dude said.

      "Coming from you, that's a
compliment," Billy said.

Chapter
73:

Pinocchio
and the whale

Titus barely had to fly the little
aircraft as it passed into the mouth of the brain ship. He'd headed out of the
Tower essentially on a straight course, and shut down the engines to try to
mask his approach. Surprisingly, none of the fighters seemed to pay him any
mind. Either they were too focused on the bigger picture, or he didn't seem
like much of a threat.

      His craft passed into the
cavernous mouth at the front of the brain ship. Titus kicked the engines back
on and landed. Never having practiced flying any of the machines in the Tower, it
wasn't a pretty landing, but he figured it didn't much matter. The engine was
coming with him. If this worked, he'd have to find another way home.

      He opened the hatch and stepped
outside, feeling the amulet he'd taken from Doc's office growing cool as it
protected him from the environment. Though not armor, it had a spell that would
let him breath if the air here turned out to be toxic, which was a start. But
he could tell right away it wasn't so different from home. Murkier, yes, with a
slight variation of gasses, but Titus would be able to breathe even without Doc's
magical help.

      He left the amulet on just in
case. You never know, he thought.

      Titus followed the instructions
Neal had provided to open the engine and start pulling out the ship's
futuristic fuel core. He'd wanted to ask Neal exactly what the little flyer's
power source was comprised of, to really dig down into the mechanics of it, but
there just wasn't time. He pulled a dense, glowing blue cylinder out from the
chassis and wrapped it up in a backpack, which he slung over his shoulders.
Inside that backpack was also an incendiary trigger. A football field in every
direction, Titus thought. That should do it.

      The brain ship felt like the belly
of a whale. It reminded Titus of watching
Pinocchio
as a kid, when
Monstro swallows up the puppet at sea. Or maybe a bit like the thing that tried
to eat the Millennium Falcon in
The Empire Strikes Back.

      Listen to me, Titus thought. I've
turned into Emily.

      He wondered briefly if he'd have a
chance to tell her about all this. She'd regret missing out on an adventure
like setting foot in a living alien space ship.

      Titus looked into the darkness, a
looming cave lit sporadically with veins of glowing red. Somewhere in there, he'd
find the brain itself. The off-switch for this entire fleet.

      He willed himself to transform
into werewolf, maintaining as much control over it as he possibly could. His
amplified senses kicked in. He smelled warm bodies, blood flowing. He heard
things moving in the dark.

      He set one clawed foot in front of
the other and went looking for those bodies. Wherever they were, they had to be
protecting what Titus sought.

      Titus wound his way through
strangely empty corridors, a stray blood cell in a vein. The trail was easy to
follow. His internal compass told him that he was heading toward the center of
the ship, though he understood he shouldn't fully trust his senses in here. For
all Titus knew, he could end up traveling in a circle.

      But then he found the first of the
parasite-wearing protectors of the ship, waiting for him at the end of a wide
hallway. Of course, he thought, staring at the scarred and tusked things. They
wanted me somewhere they could gang up on me.

      They crouched in the darkness,
simple weapons in hand. Titus wished he hadn't left his spear on the Tower. He'd
done so thinking that it would be too much to carry, the spear and the engine,
but that meant he'd have to take on these warriors with his bare claws.

      And they did seem like warriors.
Titus wondered what world they'd been conscripted from. All the aliens they'd
fought so far had been mind-controlled by those parasites on their chests. Val
and Bedlam had been intended for the same fate. If I destroy the brain ship
here, will they be set free? Or will they die?

      It doesn't matter, Titus thought,
baring his teeth and preparing to fight. It's us or them.

      I'm so tired of us or them, the
werewolf thought.

* * *

      An intruder had invaded the ship.

      This is what they've kept us here
for all this time, the chieftain thought. Warriors for an inevitable battle.
Sometimes, when the conscripted soldiers began to degrade, when the control the
Nemesis fleet held over them weakened or their bodies started to fail, they'd
be assigned on a mission to scout a potential world. Others were sent away
because their physiology was well suited for the planet to be invaded, and so
they became spies, or first strikers, or suicide missions.

      The chieftain envied them. Their
valiant deaths. Why the creatures controlling this fleet kept him here, he
never knew. Maybe they thought he was stronger than the rest. Maybe he had
taken to their control better than others. Or maybe—and this is the assumption
the chieftain believed to be true—they just forgot he was here. Another blurry,
faceless slave in a ship full of mindless monsters.

      But an intruder. They all knew
instantly this enemy was on board. The parasites they wore let them know. Fear,
anger. Protect the hive, protect the core. Kill it. Kill the thing that
threatens the whole.

      The chieftain picked up the old
weapon he'd brought from his home world, a curved blade, one honed and handed
down for generations. For years, he'd wanted to turn the blade on himself, to
free him from the endlessness of this existence with the fleet. To die and join
his wife and children in the beyond. But the parasite holding tight to his body
wouldn't let him. The fleet needed him. Just in case.

      The parasite instructed him to find
this intruder and kill it. Slowly, reluctantly, the chieftain did as he was
ordered. He had no choice. He might have resisted, once upon a time, but the days
of fighting back were long gone. He was just a puppet now, an attack dog, a
toy.

      He walked the familiar reddish
pathways of the ship, toward the sound of combat, the smell of blood. The
chieftain arrived in time to see the intruder kill his brother, cutting the
parasite that had manipulated him for years with one clawed hand while the
other lacerated his throat. The chieftain watched his brother die on the floor
of this ship and was glad. Finally you are free. Finally you can go home.

      The chieftain surveyed this
newcomer, tall as he was, almost as big, with silver fur spattered by the black
blood of the parasites and the multi-colored bloods of the warriors who wore
them. Bodies were scattered all around, some from the chieftain's species,
others from more distant stars. All great warriors who had been laid low by
these conquerors, who had their dignity and power stripped of them to be used
like weapons.

      "I'm glad you're a warrior as
well," the chieftain said in his own language to the fanged creature whose
clawed hands were covered in blood up past his wrists. "This is the death
I wanted. The end I've wished for."

      The creature seemed to comprehend.
Something far in the back of his golden eyes, some rational realization, some
connection between the chieftain and the beast.

      "This will be a good death,"
the chieftain said in his own tongue. He raised his blade and charged.

* * *

      They must have been collecting
these beings forever, Titus thought, putting down another of the
parasite-controlled aliens in his way. The deeper he got into the ship the more
common it became for them to resemble each other—small groups of the same race
or species gathered together, all scarred and strong, clearly saved by the
fleet to be guardians against their will. He could easily imagine the
werewolves of earth serving this same purpose. If the Nemesis fleet gathered
collections of creatures to serve as their warriors, then Titus's own people
were a prime choice for the job.

      One more alien strode forward from
the darkness, carrying a sword that looked older than time. This creature
looked older, too, lined face, broken teeth, an empty socket where his left eye
should be. His body was a mass of scars.

      The creature muttered something in
a language that Titus realized would die with him. Stolen from a dead world.
Kept here. Forced to fight Titus to the death. The alien looked like a war god
on his last legs. He spoke to Titus, locking eyes with him, connecting on some
deeper level. Fighter to fighter, warrior to warrior, dead man to dead man.

      Titus couldn't comprehend his
words, but understood their meaning.

      The old alien charged. Titus met
him, filled with the werewolf's fury, batting away his sword hand and lashing
out with his claws at the parasite on his chest. The alien bashed Titus's mouth
with a huge, armored shoulder, stunning the werewolf, making his eyes water. Titus
struck back, claws raking across the being's midsection, nearly gutting him.

      The alien slashed downward with
that old blade, catching Titus in the meat of his ribs, sliding down, cutting
into his abdomen. Titus roared, but the monster inside, the beast, beat down
the pain, swallowed it, used it. He caught the alien's sword arm, claws dug
into his wrist, then snapped it, forcing him to release his blade.

      They locked eyes again, like
dancers. The alien said something else, in a whisper. A thank you. An apology.
For death. For both of them.

      Titus couldn't stop the werewolf
he shared his body with from piercing the alien's neck with its fangs, blood
poured over his face and chest. The alien stopped struggling, and Titus turned
his attention to the parasite, tearing it apart more brutally than he'd done
any of the others, all the rage and pain and sadness and death washing over
him. He threw the dead parasite aside and looked once more at the old warrior,
now separated from his captor. Titus realized that the alien had died reaching
for one of the others, a creature that looked like him, green-gray skinned,
scarred and strong. He dragged the older one's body to the younger and laid
them side by side.

      They looked like brothers.

      The strange blade still protruded
from his torso. Titus pulled it free and watched his own blood gush out. He
felt weak. His knees wobbled. The wound started to heal, but slowly. Not fast
enough for what Titus needed to do.

      He limped on, deeper into the
ship, carrying the old blade with him, leaving a trail of blood behind.

      Down a corridor and up a set of
strange, slick steps, he found what he was looking for.

      The circular room was lit with a
faint green light of bioluminescence; the walls, foggy but translucent, were
veined with strands of plantlike bands. When Titus looked inside the almost-clear
walls, he understood why.

      Beings floated in stasis behind
those walls, the round shape of the room allowing them to look at each other.
They hung in fluid like a womb, unmoving except to take slow, shallow breaths.
Their skin, tree bark in texture, was shiny and black like the Nemesis fleet
ships themselves. Their bodies were elfin, thin. They almost looked like part
of the fleet, some component to a larger machine.

      Titus struck the wall with the
blade he'd taken from the dead warrior, the alien metal ringing with each
strike but not leaving a mark. He dropped the sword on the ground and started
to lash out at the walls with his claws, pounding on it with is feet and
shoulder, roaring, screaming. The glasslike substance did start to crack, but
not nearly enough. He'd never break through.

      The fluid inside the walls began
to leak through, grimy and earthy, like swamp water. The creatures behind the
glass began to stir. Sleepy yellow eyes opened in their tree-like faces, their
mouths, childlike but punctuated by curved pincers like a bug's, moved and
twitched.

      But they were sluggish. How long
have they been behind that glass? Who put them there? Were they born here?
Engineered to be this way? Would we ever know?

      He tried once more to break the
glass with the sword. If he had hours and hours, he might eventually get
through, but there were a thousand ships on a mission, receiving commands from
this room, and the Nemesis fleet had never, ever left a planet alive.

      Titus willed himself to transform
back into human shape.

      Instantly he felt all the pain
from the wound in his side. He looked down. Still raw, not even half-healed, it
was bleeding and ragged. He fell to his knees and eased the makeshift bomb on
his back down onto the ground. He slid the glowing cylinder from its bag and
started attaching the incendiary device to it, exactly as Neal told him to.
Titus laughed a little. I could've been an engineer if I'd had an ordinary
life.

      He checked the settings on the
improvised explosive and sat down on the floor, looking at the trigger Neal had
helped him build. Just a remote control from one of the machines back in the
Tower. Range of maybe twenty or thirty feet. Titus couldn't risk getting too
far away.