Chris Randolph - Stars Rain Down

The enemy also rode in force, and she could feel their blight in the distance. They were the dark and twisted Nefrem. The so-called chosen children. They were destroyers, who existed only to devour and pervert the light.

Side by side, the legion of ships and their Eireki crews awaited the coming of the darkest one. The source of the destroyers. Their mother. Their living planet.

And then the enemy came, its arrival thundering across all of creation. The queen of the light bid her fleet to wait, and hide in the shadow of a gas giant. They would attack with the rising sun.

So it unfolded. The glow and warmth of the sun crested the horizon and the Eireki rode into battle. Two surging waves of ships clashed in a rain of furious, burning light, painting the void in rent flesh and the blood of the fallen.

There was death as never before, perhaps as never would be again, leaving both forces annihilated. When the firing stopped, there remained only two combatants: the vast crimson living planet, and she, the Eireki flagship in vivid green.

She kept her distance, firing on her enemy with beams that shredded space and time with their fury. It wasn’t enough. The flesh of the enemy absorbed her fire, and retaliated in kind.

Dancing in the dark of night, she avoided reprisal and sang her song of destruction, raining hell down upon the living planet and expending everything she had. Still, it wasn’t enough. There wasn’t enough power in the universe.

Then, her Eireki crew conceived of a desperate plan. An unthinkable plan. She refused to comply, but they insisted that their lives didn’t matter. Nothing could matter except stopping the Nefrem. If they failed, all life would suffer for eternity.

Reluctantly, she accepted.

She wheeled about and charged at full speed, her weapons blazing a path before her. She entered the zone of the living planet’s influence, and its tireless psychic scream burnt the minds of her crew. There was no time to mourn. She pressed forward and howled the secret name of death, firing straighter than before.

She struck the enemy hard. Her whole body rocked from the impact but she continued on, and pressed the living planet backward, back into the gas giant, back into the waiting star-seed. Then she fired as she never had, pouring energy beyond comprehension into her foe. Her hollow-drives burst under the immense strain, one after another shattering in a fitful luminescent gasp until only one remained. Then the gas giant ignited, and its shock wave flung her to safety.

She had done it. She birthed an artificial star, a fusion furnace that would burn for sixty-five million years, with the last of the Nefrem and their living planet trapped within. It was a prison from which they couldn’t escape. The star would hold them and blind their eyes until it burned out.

She scanned inside herself for any signs of life, but there were none. The last of the Eireki were dead, as were all the other ships. She was alone. Empty. Still, there was one task left to complete.

Using the last of her stored energy, she traversed the gulf between stars and arrived at a system whose existence had been carefully concealed from the Nefrem since the beginning of time. Within this system lay the garden—a miraculous world so very much like the lost Eireki home—which had been chosen to serve a new purpose. A noble purpose. On that planet, balance would be restored and the Eireki would rise anew. From the ashes would evolve a better, stronger Eireki, capable of defeating the Nefrem once and for all.

Wounded, tired and limping, she looked down on the radiant green and blue planet, and asked forgiveness for the crime she was about to commit. Within her, the golden codex fulfilled its purpose: it adapted countless gene sequences to an eons-long program, imprinted them onto a biomechanical seed and spat it at the peaceful planet below.

The seed struck hard, raising inky clouds across the globe. The destruction would bring about change and new growth, while the retroviruses it dispersed became the seeds of resurrection. It was done. Now she could sleep and dream and wait for the children of the Eireki to wake her. She could sleep for sixty-five million years.

Sixty-five million years.

“Sixty-five million years.”

“Marcus? He’s talking. Thank God.”

“You son of a bitch. I thought we lost you.”

She opened her eyes and tried to focus. She was confused, not sure of who or what she was. Then he knew. He knew precisely what was going on. He took a deep breath as the image came into focus, and he looked at the Eireki dressed in strange suits and helmets all around him.

Juliette St. Martin was hovering above him, giving him a thorough, almost frantic, examination. “He’s coming around. I want you to focus on me. That’s good. Tell me your name.”

There was a pressure on the side of his head. He reached up and found a device attached to his temple. It was hard and smooth, but warm. It belonged there.

Juliette’s eyes were full of concern. “Can you tell me who you are?”

After a moment, he smiled and said, “My name is Marcus Donovan, and I am Eireki.”

“He’s delirious. St. Martin to Shackleton, prep the medical bay for surgery. Donovan’s been compromised by some kind of alien parasite. We’re en route now.”

“Roger that, Doctor. Preparation under way.”

Marcus was still sitting in the molded white seat, and he wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. His head was swimming like he’d just woken up from a fevered dream. Intense images and feelings flashed behind his eyes, but they were slowing down and coming less frequently. Meanwhile, Juliette was not-so-gently trying to pull him to his feet.

“Nonsense. Shackleton, belay that order,” he said, and pushed her away. “I’m fine.”

“Damn you, Marc, it’s in your brain!”

That should have bothered him more, and he knew it. Hell, he could hardly stand getting a flu inoculation, yet here he was with an alien machine plugged directly into his grey matter and it was all okay. The ship assured him it was perfectly safe and necessary.

“It’s okay, Juliette. It’s an interface, nothing more. It allows me to communicate with the ship.” He pulled up memories that weren’t his own, recollections of when the device was first designed and tested. The feeling was indescribably strange. “The interface was originally manufactured… errr, grown I guess, as an emergency fall back in case something interfered with telepathy. Our species has deficient receptor organs, so I needed it to make contact.”

“The ship told you this?” Rao asked.

“More or less.” The process felt completely intuitive, yet words were failing him. It was like trying to describe color to the blind. “I don’t hear voices or anything. I get ideas and feelings from her, and memories. Damn, the memories are something else.”

Part of the device wriggled inside his head, and he convulsed. The spasm was slight, like a nervous tick, but it was nonetheless unpleasant.

“Jeee-zus,” Faulkland said. “You’re a mess.”

Juliette pulled a hypodermic needle out of her pack. “If you won’t come willingly, we’ll take you by force. God only knows what that thing’s doing to you, Marc.” Two crewmen flanked her as she spoke.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Marcus said, and the ship agreed. A pair of ropey tendrils emerged from the ceiling and lowered towards the crewmen. He told the ship that wouldn’t be necessary, and the tendrils paused, then slowly receded. “Believe me when I say this: she’ll be very, very displeased if I’m sedated against my will, and we don’t want to make her angry. Just trust me a little, Juliette.” He gave her a reaffirming nod. “Trust me.”