Chris Randolph - Stars Rain Down

“You had something else in mind?”

She laughed. “Yeah. Artist, all the way. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have paint on my hands. And my clothes. And my face. My mother still has all the goofy little pictures I made.”

“So what happened?”

“Mars happened. For my parents, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The kind of offer they couldn’t refuse, and me… Well, I came along. That’s the only choice a teenager has.”

“There are only a couple constants in the universe, and one of them is that being a teen sucks. So, I take it there’s no market for art on Mars?”

“I dunno. Thing’s change, so maybe. Probably stupid landscapes. There wasn’t back then, though. Art’s a luxury, and when we first made planetfall, life was hard. A lot harder than anyone expected. We all worked our fingers to the bone in the early days, adults and kids alike.”

“And that’s how the painter became a wrench jockey.”

“More or less. I had small hands, and I could reach where other people couldn’t. I hated it. I hated it so bad that whenever I fixed something, I made sure it stayed fixed so I wouldn’t have to fix it again.”

They both laughed for a while. When the silence returned, she spoke again. “How about you, Doctor Marcus Donovan? What did you want to be?”

“Me? I just wanted to be on Mars.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Completely serious. There wasn’t anything I wanted more. Rocketing through space, traipsing around alien worlds and meeting little green men. That was the dream, and Mars my first target. It was the only planet close enough to be realistic. The only one with the possibility of becoming more than a stupid kid’s fantasy.”

“If it’s any consolation, you really didn’t miss anything. There was nothing on Mars but rocks and hard work.”

“I know. I’d still have given my eye-teeth just to hold one of those rocks, though. I had to make due with a crappy telescope, and by God, I kept my face glued to it from sunset to sunrise, just dreaming about all the places I’d go if I got my chance. If you look close, I’ve still got a dent on my cheek from the eye-piece.”

She looked at his face and started to giggle. “Oh God, I thought you were just saying that.”

“I cheated,” he said. “Neglected to mention the part where my brother smacked the back of my head so hard that I needed ten stitches. What are brothers for, right?”

“That’s terrible.”

“Nah. It gave me character. That’s what mom said, at least.”

Sal smiled, but it faded quickly. “So, you always knew you were going to outer space?” She sounded wistful.

“S’pose so. I went to university on a scholarship, got my degree in astronomy, and then it was straight into the Foundation. I got so wrapped up in the work that I kinda forgot about aliens and weird worlds, and just stared out into the unknown, hoping to discover some strange phenomenon to slap my name onto.”

“Until you saw an alien ship.”

“That was… clearly a turning point for me. I bet I wasn’t the first to see her. It just took someone half-crazy to recognize what she was.”

“Is that when you became Mr. Fix-It?”

“Yep. Doctor Donovan, patch kit and space gypsy. Most despised man in the Foundation, I reckon.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Say you’re working on a project, and the suits inform you that Marcus Donovan is being transferred to your station. How would you take it?”

“Like a slap in the face.”

“Right. I got used to steely gazes and professional sabotage after a while. But it didn’t matter because I had my eyes on the prize.”

A look of utter disbelief suddenly overtook her. “Wait a minute, Donovan. You’re full of crap. You’re telling me your life turned out precisely the way you imagined it.”

“Not precisely. Like you said, the future never turns out quite how you expect. In my case, I just got more than I wished for.”

“More of what?”

“Everything. I wanted to see new places and peoples. Instead, I’ve got an alien warship plugged into my skull, and now this war… The Earth’s lying in shambles, Legacy keeps telling me the fate of the galaxy is hanging in the balance, and I’m the only person in a position to do a damn thing about it. Can you imagine that? No one likes having responsibility dropped on their shoulders, and I’ll be frank with you… I’m the worst possible candidate for the job. I’m not a general, or even much of a leader really. I’m just an astronomer who likes to solve problems.”

They were both silent in the wake of that revelation. Marcus hadn’t paid much attention to how he felt about it all. He’d just been along for the ride, doing whatever came naturally, and this was the first time he stopped to think about it. He wasn’t entirely pleased at what he found.

They both looked out over the sleeping factory for a long while, until Marcus finally spoke again. “I know this isn’t the future any of us expected, Amira, but whether we like it or not, it’s the one we were dealt. The fate of our race is hanging in the balance, and we need all the hands we can get. Even the little ones.”

She was still quiet. He decided it was time to leave, and let her make the right choice on her own. Before he left, he said one last thing. “We’ll all collapse if we don’t carry this weight together, and there won’t be anyone left to pick us up.”

It was true: Marcus Donovan didn’t have a subtle bone in his body, but sometimes subtlety wouldn’t do.

With their training complete, the Bravos became a full-fledged combat cell with Jack in command. They kept their ERC jumpsuits, whose colors had faded to dull brown during their long months in the dirt, and they added desert-camo ponchos as further protection against the late summer sun.

Charlie told them their first mission would be a warmup, requiring nothing more than basic competence. These types of missions were assigned to separate the wheat from the chaff. Successful cells moved on to greater challenges, while failures would either be drummed out of the organization, or simply swallowed up by the sands.

Their assignment turned out to be just as simple as Charlie suggested. The Bravos were to head into the Gaza Strip to search for spare fuel cells, and conduct routine reconnaissance along the way. It was known territory with plenty of cover, and screwing it up would require real effort.

The resistance always moved at night. During daylight, alien forces were everywhere, their cuttlefish flitting through the air and long-legged walkers stalking the land. But at night, the alien forces dwindled to scattered foot patrols, and mankind made their moves. The darkness became their last refuge and final domain.

No one knew why the alien activity dropped off after sunset, but there rumors and theories flew around in abundance. Most claimed the alien vehicles were a combination of solar powered and cold blooded. Jack meanwhile found a good chuckle in thinking the invaders were afraid of the dark.

Nikitin had his own theory, based on the pet bird he had as a kid. The bird was a parakeet named Mister Whistles, and whenever the sun was up, Mister Whistles would tweet and twitter non-stop. But if someone so much as dropped a blanket over his cage, he’d go silent as a whisper. Lights out birdy. Nikitin called it the “alien parakeet theory,” and Albright was an unexpected supporter, preferring the more sophisticated sounding “diurnal theory.”

Whatever the reason, daytime was off-limits. The Bravos trundled out over rocky terrain in a military four-wheeler with Corpsman Andrew Chase at the wheel, and arrived before sun up. They hid their vehicle beneath a dirt-brown tarp on the outskirts of the farms, in the palm of a rock outcropping shaped like a hand thrusting out of the soil. The aliens weren’t known to be curious, but caution was rarely a mistake.