“I’ve never been a fan of exogenesis theories,” Juliette said, “but at least you didn’t tell me alien astronauts built the pyramids.”
Marcus laughed. “You’re all taking this surprisingly well.”
Faulkland slapped him on the back. “Pal, we’re inside a living spaceship that can read our minds. You could tell us this thing’s made of delicious marshmallow floating in a giant cup of cocoa, and I don’t think anyone would bat an eye.”
“It’s a little disappointing,” Professor Caldwell said, “I mean, it’s all fantastic beyond belief. Don’t get me wrong. But my entire career is about piecing together theories about ancient peoples. Instead, all the answers have been laid out on a silver platter.”
“I dunno,” Rao said, “it’s like a time capsule. A message in a bottle from the ancient past. That’s pretty exciting in its own right. Besides, we still have plenty to learn about the ship. And think of where she can take us, of what cultures we’ve yet to meet.” Rao’s eyes were full of stars.
“I suppose you’ve got a point there,” Caldwell said.
Faulkland dramatically coughed into his hand. “Excuse me, but am I the only one wondering about the dark, evil space demons? And what the hell is this room, anyway?”
“This room,” Marcus said, “is the bridge.”
As he spoke, the walls faded from white to black, and then lit up with the stars and asteroids all around them. The shiny metallic Shackleton was visible, floating a safe distance away. The image all around was crystal clear and perfect, just like being out in space except without a bulky helmet to get in the way.
Everyone was taken aback, and several stumbled and fell over.
“Hot damn,” Faulkland said. “That’s one hell of a view.”
Rao climbed back up to his feet shakily. “You’ve got to warn people before you do these things, Marc.”
“Sorry,” Marcus said with a smirk. “As for the Nefrem, the ship’s still updating her star charts, trying to determine just how long she’s been out. If everything went according to plan, though, we should have plenty of time to gather a fleet and give them a proper howdy-doo.”
A memory suddenly surged through Marcus’ mind, and he assumed it was the ship’s doing. The memory was vivid, like being back there again. He and his family were standing on the porch, taking turns looking through the rusty, old telescope his uncle had given him. There was a fantastic light show. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, had exploded into a multicolored eye-shaped burst as bright as the full moon. The next day, they could still see it in broad daylight, and it continued that way for two years.
The memory faded and Marcus stumbled to the side. “Oh damn,” he said, “estimates were off. We were slow.”
“And the demons are free,” Faulkland guessed.
Marcus said, “Sirius B. That was what, twenty-five years ago, right?”
“A little more,” Rao said, “plus eight point six light-years. Thirty-four years, all told.”
The words struck him, and the ship started to assimilate the new information. They were behind schedule, he knew that much, and the ship was busy estimating how badly. After a moment, she began to fill him in on Nefrem tactics.
The Nemesis would require two to three years just to resume normal functioning after its release, at which point it would still be too weak for interstellar travel. It would enter emergency resource acquisition mode. Scouts would be constructed and sent to locate nearby accumulations of life, followed by fleets that would strip and return digestible biomass. The process would continue until the living planet was at nominal strength, with no fewer than three full battle fleets. That could take anywhere from ten to forty years, depending on the population of nearby stars, and after that, real conquest would begin.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Marcus said. “The bad news is that they’re definitely free, and we have no way of knowing how many planets have already fallen. The good news is that their living planet won’t be at full strength yet. Not like it was during the war, at least. More of a big living asteroid.”
“Will they come for Earth?” Faulkland asked. “Should we be mounting defenses?”
Marcus shook his head. “No, they won’t be coming here. She’s pretty certain of that. As far as they know, our system is dead and insignificant. It’s like a hypnotic suggestion. They’ll eventually see through it, though, and we must have them on the defensive before that happens. If they get here, it’ll already be too late.
“It’s imperative that we get the ship back in working order as soon as possible. There should be enough raw material here in the asteroid belt to make repairs. Then we return to Earth and start building our own fleet. All life in the galaxy depends on it.”
“Do you know how to do any of that?” Juliette asked.
Marcus shook his head. “Not exactly, but we’ll figure it out.” The ship told him they’d figure it out together, then she passed another message that Marcus thought strange. It was a request. “She’s digging around in my head, trying to get a hang on how we process thoughts. Our language, the syntax and ways we name things. It’s all messy and very new to her. She… she wants me to give her a name.”
“Go ahead,” Faulkland said. “I’ve always had a weakness for girls’ names, myself.”
Rao looked at Marcus seriously. “Something better than Zebra-One, this time.”
Marcus ran through a string of girls’ names, but none of them seemed appropriate. This ship was more than just a vessel. She was a remembrance of things forgotten. She was a gift and a responsibility handed down from the past. Then the name came to him. “It’s only right to call her Legacy.”
Legacy approved.
Chapter 17:
Survival
What struck Jack in the first week following the invasion was the quiet. Not silence, but the serene quiet of wilderness in the absence of man. It was the quiet of civilization’s demise.
It took a little time to set in. At first, the sound of alien craft filled the air, while ground troops overran the ruins and rounded up the last survivors. Then, after less than a week, there was nothing and no one left. With their task complete, the bastards withdrew and left nothing behind but the piles of dead, the unsettling quiet and the furious howling of the dust filled wind.
As the second week began, the next thing that struck Jack was the smell. Although his gas mask kept the dust out of his lungs, it did little to obscure the stench of death. He would’ve done anything to get that smell out of his nose, but there was simply no escape. At least they were in sparsely populated rural areas; he didn’t dare imagine what the cities were like.
The invaders were still on Earth, though. That much was certain. The cycling sound of their cuttlefish craft occasionally sounded high overhead, but they never came down. They never bothered. They had better places to be than in that stinking wasteland. China was defeated, and held no more mystery for them. No more resistance.
The enemy had exclusively targeted humans, killing them and moving on, never staying longer than it took to perform the extermination. This turned out to be a boon to Jack and his makeshift team. While buildings of every kind had been laid to waste, vehicles, roads and bridges were left untouched. Food was easy enough to find and quite a few places still had water pressure. Fuel cells were scattered everywhere amongst the rubble, whole and functioing thanks to their crash-proof casings.
On the eighth day, while the team sat on the edge of yet another ruined village, Jack decided time had come to find transportation. “Anyone know how to hot-wire a car?”
He still didn’t know his new corpsmen from Adam. They were jumpsuits and gas-masks with nametags, and nothing more. That would’ve been unacceptable at any other point in his career, but no one was feeling particularly social.