Stars Rain Down Read online

  Stars Rain Down

  by Chris J. Randolph

  To my parents, Barry and Christine, who’ve endured more of my day-dreaming, silliness and slacking than anyone ever could have expected. Thank you for literally everything.

  A massive thanks also to Steven, Bob, and Dianna for your support, patience and understanding. You keep me sane-ish, and this never could have happened without you… I leave you to decide whether that’s a good thing or not.

  Chapter 0:

  There was nothing left but a single fortress, its armor tarnished and its silhouette a black mark against the burnt sky. The metropolis surrounding it had been pummeled into bloodstained rubble and shattered glass, and the scene was the same across twelve continents. Where the Somari empire had once flourished in all its glory and arrogance, now only the fortress remained.

  At its foot, where the air was clotted with shrapnel and ragged flames, the last survivors of the Trans-Continental Army made their final stand. They had been pinned down and slowly strangled to death, forced to take cover behind the mutilated remains of their civilization while spitting fire at anything that moved. Without hope for victory or escape, they were walking ghosts fueled by rage, too stubborn to admit they were already dead.

  And still the invaders pressed on, coming at them from every direction. Enemy infantry advanced tirelessly over broken ground, leading the way for mechanized monsters whose artillery howled through the swirling dust. Each blast bit into the fortress’ failing armor and inched the war closer to its end.

  Meanwhile, within the fortress and far from the crumbling line, sounds of the fight became a baleful symphony. Cannon fire beat an uneven rhythm, accompanied by a melody of screaming jets and the bark of ten thousand rifles. Strained voices cried out in chorus, then were silenced once and for all.

  This song came to Kai while he slept and dreamed. He ran from one nightmare landscape to the next, chased by a living machine that devoured the ground beneath him. The unstoppable beast chewed up and swallowed whole civilizations to feed its hunger, and still it craved more.

  Then an explosion rocked Kai’s incubation tank and he was awake. The nightmare world dissolved only to be replaced by the chaos of reality.

  He blinked and blinked again but his eyes refused to focus. The world was blurry and ill defined, tinted by the cold blue gestational fluids. Something wasn’t right. The incarnation process wasn’t complete, but he knew there had to be an explanation.

  A staccato series of explosions thumped at the chamber’s walls, and Kai struggled to keep cool. It was no time to panic. He pressed his eyes closed and slowly opened them, and this time the image became sharper. The laboratory was in shambles; sparks danced from the ceiling, and rows of mangled birthing tanks dangled limply from their umbilical cords.

  A pair of genetechs in red gowns rushed over to him, one carrying an armload of clothing. The color had long ago drained from their faces, and their wrinkled hands shook as they went to work at the console. Their expressions spoke of terror mixed with sadness.

  Somehow, Kai kept his head in check.

  The string of lights at the top of the tank changed color and their blinking pattern became insistent. He understood the message, but the gravity of it didn’t strike him. Not that it mattered. There wasn’t any way to prevent what came next.

  There was a rumble and the ratcheting of mechanical locks. The viscous fluid drained from the tank a moment later, exposing his partially developed skin to fresh air. There wasn’t any pain. Not yet.

  Then the front of the tank opened and dropped him onto the cold metal floor where he curled up like a newborn. He wanted so badly to remain calm, but he had no chance. There was simply too much pain, and it grew so loud that it blotted out every other thought until only a mewling animal remained.

  His mind retreated while his body rebelled. The tendons of his jaw stretched around a silent scream, and a series of quick convulsions violently ejected liquid from his lungs. More blue fluid splashed across the floor, reflecting the flickering ceiling lamps on its silken surface.

  The genetechs were speaking, but Kai was somewhere else. Somewhere far away, out of communication range. It took several long minutes for the wounded animal to subside, and finally allow rational thoughts to re-emerge.

  “It’s too early,” one of them said.

  “Nonsense. His nervous system is fully formed, and cellular automata are functioning within acceptable parameters. Sinit Kai, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” he mumbled feebly. His mouth was an unfamiliar instrument. “Why?” he managed to ask.

  The older genetech crouched down beside him. The scientist might have been a mountain once, but decades of erosion had left him shriveled, withered and craggy. “Our time has run out, Kai. You must leave this place while the path remains open.”

  Kai coughed and more fluid wrestled its way out of his throat. “I need to get to the front lines. The war…”

  The genetech placed a hand under Kai’s chin, and gently lifted his head. “There is no war,” he said. “All you hear is the last gasp of the dying.”

  “It’s a funeral,” the other genetech said.

  “How?”

  The scientist shook his head as he spoke. “We lost at Sylus Gate, and the rest of our defenses collapsed in a cascade.”

  The other said, “Locara, Asheth, Telarius Point, and finally here. Each one a total defeat.”

  Kai looked down at his incomplete hand. The structure was in place, but patches of half-formed skin scarcely covered the lattice-work of muscle machinery. If his estimates were correct, that placed him in the eleventh day of incubation. His entire world had been conquered in just thirteen days.

  His mind raced. “I’m still asleep,” he said.

  The genetech said, “I hope you’re right, and that you soon wake.”

  As the last word came out of the genetech’s mouth, the far end of the chamber exploded. Flames clawed through the wall, and spit forth shards of razor sharp metal.

  Something clicked in Kai’s head and engineered instinct took over. He plotted the trajectory of every moving object in the chamber and launched into the air, twisting and contorting to avoid the shrapnel that ricocheted all around.

  An instant later, the room was quiet once again, and Kai found himself crouched over the genetechs’ remains. The hail of metal had shred them to pieces, and their blood now mixed with the blue gestational fluid in swirls. In spirals.

  “Go,” one of them gasped. “The lowest level. The machine waits.” Then he was gone.

  Kai stuffed the bundle of clothes under his arm and ran. The tunnels leading away from the laboratory were twisted, warped, and empty except for the sound of his feet pounding across the stone floor and the rumble of approaching fire. He was running through a graveyard, and the graveyard was burning.

  Level by level, he wound his way through the maze of corridors and descended deeper into the ground. All the while, sounds of the battle grew louder as one floor after the next was stripped away by the unstoppable fury of the invaders.

  He reached the last subfloor and sprinted toward the central hub while the heavy bulkheads closed behind him, permanently sealing the crypt.

  Then he was there, wherever there was. The room was another lab, this one bright white and circular. It was clean and totally untouched by the war that had demolished his planet. A sarcophagus-like capsule stood at its center amid an overgrowth of cables and machinery.

  Kai wasn’t sure what to do next. He dug through the bundle of clothes until he found a mission-computer, a hollow metallic cylinder with an eery sheen, and he latched the device around his wrist like a shackle. Once closed, it adjusted itself to his arm and then he felt the familiar tingle of it inte
rfacing with his nervous system.

  The computer’s screen lit up and words began to scroll by, which he simultaneously heard echoed in the back of his head. Its voice was childlike and boisterous. “Initializing… Initialization complete. Greetings, Sinit Kai. You will be pleased to know that all of my systems are functioning at maximum efficiency.”

  The older models weren’t so cloyingly personable. “Sure. Great,” he said as he slipped into his uniform. “What’s my mission?”

  “You’re a rude one. No matter. Your mission is simple. You need only step into the capsule, and it will do the rest.”

  Kai fastened the last of his buttons and tugged his jacket to make sure it was straight. The self-healing material of the uniform sealed itself against his half-formed skin, and the last of the pain disappeared. “I don’t follow. What does this capsule do?”

  “How strange. I thought Sinit-class infiltrators were supposed to follow orders without question.”

  “Things change,” Kai said. “And I seem to be the entire chain of command now.”

  The computer took a moment to process that. “Well, if you absolutely must know, the capsule is an experimental transit system. There’s a significant chance it will deliver us to a distant star… or it may annihilate us in a lovely show of lights. To be quite honest, I’m not sure which is more likely.”

  “Comforting.” Kai didn’t take long to make his decision. At least the capsule offered some chance of survival. He stepped inside and tried to make himself comfortable. “To what end?”

  “Our intelligence operatives were able to determine the enemy’s next target, and the device is programmed to deliver you there. Upon arrival, you will have two objectives.”

  The capsule closed, and hissed as its pressure seals locked into place.

  “Get on with it, machine.”

  “You are terribly impatient, you know that? I was getting there. Your first objective is to protect me. I was implanted with a shard of the Primogenitor’s holographic data-core, and I now contain the entire stored knowledge of our people. Our accomplishments must not be forgotten. Your other objective is to deliver a message.”

  The hiss slowed to a halt, and was followed by a series of warbling tones that caused the capsule to vibrate. Their volume raised until the entire vessel became one great tuning fork.

  Then it happened. There was a bright flash, and the capsule climbed up and up through the many layers of the ruined fortress and further into the bleeding sky. The teeming ranks of the enemy stretched away in all directions, covering the land to the far horizon.

  Once the capsule was clear, a furiously burning light swelled up out of the fortress and engulfed the land. It raced out and swallowed the invaders, burning and crackling as it went. As the planet shrank away from Kai’s view, the whole world was eaten by the blinding power of that light, and then it all blinked out at once.

  “What in creation?” Kai asked.

  “There will be no surrender, Sinit Kai. The Somari race died today, but the enemy paid dearly for their victory.”

  The whole situation was too surreal. Kai’s head swam and he prayed to wake up, but it was no use. He was alone in a strange capsule hurtling through the blackness of space, and the world he knew was gone. “Tell me, what message am I to deliver?”

  “Tell the universe that the Nefrem have awakened. Tell them the devourer is coming.”

  The mission-comp’s words echoed through his mind as the remains of his homeworld disappeared from view, and he heard them over and over until he finally drifted off to sleep. It was a sleep haunted by a billion wailing ghosts, and the spectre of strange worlds yet to come.

  Chapter 1:

  The Hidden

  Dr. Marcus Donovan was looking through a rectangular porthole. A thick pane of clear polycarbonate separated him from the cold emptiness of space and the radiant blue, green and white-flecked Earth some 300 kilometers beyond. It was mid-morning down there in New Zealand, and he idly wondered what details escaped his sight from this distance.

  “You ever get tired of staring out the windows, Marc?”

  Without turning, he knew that Dr. Vijay Rao, his best friend and second in command, was floating in the doorway. They had played out this scene a hundred times before on a series of orbital platforms looking out over every continent but Antarctica. It was their routine. “Tired? Maybe someday, Jay. Not today.”

  “I honestly wish I had your love for it. I mean, I was pretty starry eyed my first time up, but I could forget there are windows at all these days. Know what I mean?”

  Marcus dragged a dark brown finger across the transparent surface, tracing the line where blue-green water met the thin beige strip of beach so far away. “No, don’t think I do. This is the whole reason I’m here. Mom always said I had my head in the clouds, but she was only half-way there.”

  He turned, pushed himself away from the window and floated toward the open door, lightly brushing at a series of hand-rails as he went. “I take it the array’s ready to roll.”

  Rao waved him on. “She passed all diagnostics with flying colors. Just waiting for you to throw the switch, boss.”

  “Lead on,” Marcus said, and together they made their way through the heart of the Copernicus Observatory like creatures born to weightlessness, until the narrow tunnel opened up into the spherical command center. The walls there were covered with workstations, each with its own technician and glowing terminal, except at the room’s equator where a ring of windows revealed the Earth beneath them, the sun above and countless stars in every direction.

  “Commander on the bridge!” someone shouted, and the crew snapped to attention.

  “Damn jokers,” Marcus muttered. He wasn’t a stickler for protocol, or anything remotely like formality for that matter. The Global Aerospace Foundation drove him batty with that stuff, and everyone knew it. “Back to your stations, people. We’re three weeks ahead of schedule, but there’s still work to do.”

  He pushed off and drifted out into the middle of the room, and stopped by gently colliding with his own station. Rao trailed a meter behind him. “Jansen, bring the generators up to full output and start cycling the capacitors,” Marcus said.

  “Already on it, sir.”

  “Park, bring the array about. You know where I want to look.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “We only get one chance at this. Let’s make it count.”

  Rao patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a liar, Marc. The only reason you’re up here is to tilt at this little windmill of yours.”

  Marcus cracked a smile. “One man’s windmill is another man’s giant. Ms. Park, are we ready?”

  “Coordinates locked and ready to scan, sir.”

  Rao put on a gambler’s smile. “Bet you fifty credits we only come up with rocks and empty space this time.”

  “Make it a hundred and you’re on.”

  They shook hands, and Marcus turned, saying, “Commence scanning, full spectrum at eighty-five percent intensity.”

  With that, the Copernicus Observatory was momentarily filled with an ear-splitting whine as its massive capacitors discharged, followed by the deep electronic hum of its multi-megawatt scanning array. No one spoke for minutes as they awaited the first results.

  Ms. Park finally called out, “We’re receiving data, sir. Should I pipe it over to the main viewer?”

  “Yeah. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  A three-dimensional holograph blinked into existence in the center of the room, at first indistinct like a roiling cloud of smoke. Park worked furiously at her station and the image became more crisp, but it remained speckled with noise that frustrated any attempt to make sense of it.

  Marcus pushed away from his station and toward the projection. “That’s no good. Raise the background radiation filter’s threshold another twelve percent.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  It came into focus with crystal clarity. “I’ll be damned,” Rao said near whisper. “
I’m out another hundred bucks.”

  “Hello again, Zebra-One,” Marcus said to the image, greeting it like an old friend. He watched the display’s clock tick away, and when it reached thirty-five seconds, the object vanished from sight. He wasn’t at all surprised. “You’re getting slower, you little tease.”

  “Should we continue scanning, sir?”

  “No point,” he said. “That’s all we’ll ever get with this equipment. Switch over to the deep space survey program. Mr. Shen, inform Bangalore the array is on-line. Tell ‘em we’re prepared to hand-off control to the ground.”

  Marcus Donovan pulled his datapad out of its holster and dialed back the recording to the thirtieth second, and there floating in front of him was the anomaly he’d personally discovered seven years earlier. He was stationed aboard the Brahe Array at the time, an orbital telescope like Copernicus but older and mustier, tasked with routine scans of the asteroid belt. That’s when he stumbled upon her, a dozen kilometers long, oddly striped and density all wrong to be an asteroid. Then, before he could get a decent look, she was gone just as suddenly as he’d found her. That first peek was only five seconds long, but it changed his entire life.

  During the months that followed, Marcus used every spare minute aboard Brahe to re-scan the belt, but he only found rocks and more rocks behind them. He personally oversaw diagnostics and checked each piece of hardware by hand, and he went over his data with a fine-toothed comb, but he always arrived at the same answers: there was no malfunction, he had seen something, and now he could not.

  Marcus named the anomaly Zebra-One for the strange stripes along her length, as well as her talent for disappearing into the grass.

  His secret obsession transformed him. He grew from an undistinguished junior researcher into one of the single most dedicated, knowledgeable and experienced minds in deep space study, and it wasn’t long before the Foundation took notice. Offers poured in from more prestigious stations, and with nothing left for him aboard Brahe, he left.

  The next few years, he toured through every station that would have him, and picked up a reputation as a true-blue problem solver. He became the Foundation’s patch kit, their answer to projects that were over-budget or behind schedule. All the while, he continued hunting for his zebra, and at each stop he enjoyed another brief glimpse of her before she vanished from sight. With each look he grew more obsessed.