Stars Rain Down

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.

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,â€

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?â€

Jack Hernandez was rechecking his equipment when the ride began to buck and shake. The metal cabin dipped and shuddered violently, but the U-shaped metal restraint over his shoulders kept him planted firmly in his seat. At this point in his career, trans-atmospheric flight was slightly more exciting than riding a commuter train.

“Man, hell of ride, ain’t it?â€

The Global Aerospace Foundation’s main campus was a huge complex covering two square kilometers outside of Bangalore, India. The architecture married gothic and high-tech, with great swooping roofs that gave the impression of the buildings themselves reaching for the distant stars. To Marcus Donovan, it was a modern day revival of renaissance cathedrals, pure pomp and self-importance, evoking the immeasurable vastness of space and by comparison, man’s own insignificance. Other times, he just thought it was huge and ugly.

The main doors were on the eastern side, surrounded by a half-circle of stone columns arrayed as a sundial. They tracked the sun’s daily and yearly journeys through the sky, a simple reminder of Earth’s endless whirling journey through space.

Beyond that sat a sunken courtyard with a black memorial wall, inscribed with the name of every human being known to have perished in space exploration. The monument was inspired by the Vietnam Memorial still standing in old Washington DC, and oddly, both monuments were made of granite from the same Bangalore quarry less than ten kilometers away.

As usual, Marcus passed the wall without pausing, and promised himself he’d stop and read the names next time. It was always next time.

Leaning heavily on a metal cane, he limped past the wall, through the towering columns and headed straight for the automatic glass doors. He was thankful for that last detail. His tours in space were growing longer and more frequent, and that coupled with his natural aversion to exercise made every return to gravity more difficult—more painful—than the last. This time, he’d endured two weeks of physical therapy after touchdown, and his legs still felt like chewing gum in July. He wouldn’t be walking at all without the cane, and normal everyday doors were more trouble than he cared for.

As he limped up to doors, the GAF emblem loomed above. It was a circular seal with shape that could have been a great red bird soaring to the stars. He wasn’t sure, really. The design was terribly abstract, and the bird could as easily have been a spaceship, a boomerang, or man’s indomitable will to greatness. It was anyone’s guess.

The foundation’s motto was written in golden letters around the seal, reading “Ab terra, ad infinitum et ultrum.â€

Marcus Donovan’s con worked. Less than a week later (3.3 picoseconds in bureaucratic time), the Budget Oversight Committee agreed to his plan and the Gypsies left on the first shuttle out.

They spent the next two months finishing and reconfiguring the 170 meter long Shackleton Explorer. The Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto probes were removed and placed in storage for some future Jupiter expedition, as was the bulky orbital scanning array, while seven modular cargo containers and a state-of-the-art extra-vehicular mission unit were installed in their place. The cargo holds were packed full of mining equipment and explosives which Marcus realized would have no use on the mission, but he couldn’t figure out a way to ditch them without raising questions.

The Shackleton lost the planetary scanning equipment, but still retained its own substantial suite of sensors. The countless forward facing antennae made it look something like a harpoon for use against impossibly large whales. It also featured a pair of opposed habitation pods that jutted out from the main hull on their own stalks, which were designed to rotate around the central axis and supply the crew with more than half Earth gravity during the long voyage. What the Shackleton lacked in amenities, she made up for in advanced equipment. Mostly, anyway.

The interior of the Shackleton Explorer was a perfect match for her exterior, being both functional and inhumanly spartan. No plush seating, no Corinthian leather; only the bare essentials, and in some places slightly less. Marcus couldn’t shake the thought that he would be hurtling through space in a tin-can lashed haphazardly to a nuclear reactor. He and his crew were about to become real space cowboys, riding out across the wild frontier.

Like the ship, Donovan’s Gypsies were also reorganized. Most of his research staff made the transition: Sarah Park stayed on as sensor operator, and Mason Shen on communications, while Nils Jansen had no interest in leaving Earth orbit and found posting elsewhere. The grizzled and stoic Hector Pacheco continued as crew chief, but his work crews were entirely purpose built, so the hands that assembled the ship were replaced with professional low-g miners before launch.

None of the Gypsies were qualified to operate a nuclear powered exploratory vessel, so it was necessary to comingle their ranks with the original Jupiter mission crew. Marcus was put in charge of the mission, but Commander Alex Faulkland remained in charge of ship’s operations. Faulkland’s team would be responsible for navigation, maneuvering, and the day-to-day maintenance of the nuclear drive systems, while Donovan’s people would conduct the survey and mining.

For the first time in his career, Marcus wished the Foundation had a rigid rank structure with a clear chain of command. The current arrangement was too ambiguous for his liking, and he had no clue who would prevail if (or more likely when) a disagreement came about.

This feeling was made worse because he detected some hard feelings among Faulkland’s crew, and he harbored no illusions about who they would side with. The ship’s original mission would have set records for the most distant manned mission, and there was a lot of pride attached. Marcus just had to hope they were all professional who could adaptable to sudden changes in plans, because the one thing he knew for sure was that sudden changes were on their way.

The rest of The Shackleton’s bunks were filled with Rao’s research team, which included Dr. Juliette St. Martin, a former leading theoretical exobiologist who returned to medicine when the political climate got stormy, and Professor Harris Caldwell, who was brought on as a geologist officially, and as an archaeologist somewhat less officially.

With the ship completed and its crew assembled, The Shackleton Expedition left Earth orbit with little more fanfare than a “Good luckâ€

As the Shackleton Explorer approached its destination, there was nothing ahead of it but empty space. The atmosphere on the bridge had been peppered with excitement and discovery a moment before, but it was now thick with confusion.

Then the ship passed through… something. It was like a thin film or the surface of a liquid, and there was suddenly something massive out in front of them, so large that it filled the entire viewport and made all the nearby asteroids seem shrimpy by comparison. The object was long and thin like a cannon, and Marcus knew from his studies that it stretched more than thirteen kilometers from end-to-end, with a secondary structure attached to its hip that, while shorter, was still more than eight kilometers long.

Seen for the first time in person, the sheer scale of Zebra-One was confounding.

The air of discovery rushed back into the bridge, electrified with total astonishment. It was moments before anyone could muster the ability to speak.

Faulkland spoke first. He furrowed his brow, pursed his lips, and said, “Ms. Park, bring up the survey image of Zebra-One.â€

The sky was dull grey, and rain was trying to fall in fits and starts. It wasn’t a storm yet, but the promise of something dreadful hid within the water fat clouds. Jack Hernandez wasn’t pleased. The last thing he wanted to see on returning from hurricane-ravaged Jacksonville was more rain. He’d been hip-deep in flood waters for so long he could scarcely remember what dry underwear felt like, and he spent the entire flight home dreaming about the warm San Jose sun. His plan was to do nothing but dry out for two straight days.

The sun, that cowardly bastard, was nowhere to be found.