Hena Day One Page 9

  He shot straight toward two Cartaxian warriors, looping his arms around their middle and tackling them down into the cold water of the Han River.

  As the water surged around him, he used a massive pulse of energy from his Q crystal, forcing his arms together with maximal speed and strength. It was enough to crush the Cartaxian’s armor on impact.

  As he twisted his head up and stared through the water above him, he saw blasts of light zooming high in the sky.

  The Army had opened fire.

  And so had the Cartaxians.

  The first battle had begun.

  Chapter 16

  Harry Edwards

  “Jesus Christ,” Harry jolted back, dropping the keys for the Jeep. They banged against his shoe and fell into a ditch beside the dirt road.

  He made no move to grab them.

  He stood there, shaking with shock as two black dots dropped from the sky.

  They struck the car, landing on the hood and roof and crushing it completely.

  Harry jolted back, but he didn’t run. There was no point.

  Both figures were tall. Easily standing at about seven feet. They were broad, too, giving their bodies the look of linebackers in American football.

  They looked exactly like humans were it not for the seven fingers on each of their hands and the fact they’d dropped from the damn sky.

  Harry didn’t bring his hands up. He didn’t beg for his life. He stood there.

  Both of the aliens walked off the crumpled car, the sound of metal grating around their armored boots echoing through the previously quiet jungle.

  One angled its head toward him.

  And it started to speak.

  In Vietnamese.

  But he only spoke patchy Vietnamese. Linh was always there to translate.

  Except for now.

  Harry was covered in sweat, and his heart pounded so hard, it felt like hands trying to tear his rib cage in half.

  But he didn’t run. He didn’t fall on his knee and beg for salvation.

  He stood his ground. Because if that was all he could do in the face of certain death, then goddammit, that was all he would do.

  There was a pause as the alien obviously expected Harry to answer.

  The other alien ticked its head to the side. “It doesn’t speak that language,” it said in perfect clipped English.

  Harry bristled.

  Before he could conclude that the alien somehow had the ability to scan his brain and figure out what language he spoke, the alien brought up a finger and pointed at his pocket. “The documents in its pocket are in this language.”

  … They had the ability to scan what was in his pocket through his clothes? Detecting what something was made of was one thing. Somehow discerning writing through several layers of fabric should be impossible.

  “Human, you will tell us where the Covax went,” the first alien repeated in English this time.

  Harry swallowed.

  So they were after Linh, ha?

  He had two options. Tell them exactly where she was or try to be brave.

  On the face of it, he didn’t owe Linh anything. She’d already made her choice to flee, and he’d made his choice to stay.

  She hadn’t tried to stop him as he’d walked away.

  And even if he didn’t tell these aliens where she was, presumably they’d be able to track where he’d been walking based off his damn footprints, let alone the use of their fancy scanners that could read through solid matter.

  So there was no point, ha?

  Wrong.

  It was the same thing he’d tried to tell Linh before she’d decided to flee.

  It was precisely when there was no point that you had to act as if there was.

  Maybe Harry didn’t always come across as a deep thinker. And God knows, most of the time he wasn’t.

  If there was one thing his old man had instilled in him, it was that when you had to make a difference, you did. When you were thrust into a situation that could mean life or death for others, you chose life, even if it meant yours.

  So Harry took a step forward, out of the forest, right toward the aliens. As he did, he shifted himself between them and the direction back to Linh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Kill it,” the second alien said.

  Harry wasn’t afforded the opportunity for his life to flash before his eyes.

  The first alien brought up its hand, metal peeling back from its palm and revealing a hollowed-out recess that penetrated deep into its elbow.

  Light began to build in that hollow, blazing as brightly as a gas flame.

  Harry stared at it.

  And he waited.

  He hadn’t saved Linh’s life, but maybe in the great scheme of things, he’d somehow made a difference.

  He took his last breath.

  Or at least what he assumed would be his last breath.

  But just before that white-hot, blistering pulse of light could strike him, tear his body apart, and end his life in an instant, something slammed into both aliens. It struck them with such force and speed that, in the blink of an eye, they went from being there, to disappearing in a flash.

  The sound of metal striking metal blasted out around the jungle, and Harry jolted backward, the tread of his boots slipping against the treacherous gravel path and sending him tumbling.

  By the time he managed to pick himself up, he felt air flattening down from above. He expected to see a helicopter, some sort of low-flying plane, but he could see nothing. And yet something had to be there. He could detect an increase in heat, and he could hear the faintest hum, almost as if a thousand insects were separated from him by a wall.

  “What the hell?” he had time to say.

  Something appeared right in front of him, just a meter away. A hatch door. It wrote itself out of nothing but the air as if an artist had quickly drawn it over the picture of the jungle.

  Just before Harry could fear that it was another alien, Linh appeared. She crossed her arms and leaned against the hatch door and looked right down at him.

  Past her, he could see a vessel. Deep enough that it spanned the 20-meters-wide road.

  “Jesus Christ,” Harry managed.

  “No, not Jesus. Now get in.”

  Harry stared at her as she pushed off the door and reached a hand out.

  “Are you going to… drop me off somewhere?” he found himself asking, even though he could appreciate his words were stupid.

  You would ask your friend if they would drop you off somewhere if they picked you up in their car.

  This was not a car.

  And where exactly would Linh drop him off that wouldn’t be like this? Crawling with aliens and about as safe as a snake pit.

  “I thought it over,” Linh revealed, hand still held out to him.

  “What?”

  “Keep up. Your chances.”

  “My chances?”

  “Everybody’s chances.”

  “And?” Harry asked, hope echoing through his voice.

  Linh looked right at him, and even though he could no longer see the blue line that she’d revealed on her face, he fancied he saw just a flicker of something deep in her pupils – enough to prove once and for all that she was the alien she claimed to be. “And you have a chance. Humanity has a chance. One I’m willing to take with you.”

  Harry’s shoulders practically caved, and he almost fell. But he managed to place his hand into hers, and Linh, showing strength her small form shouldn’t have – or at least if it were really human – pulled him easily into the vessel.

  As soon as he was inside it, he could no longer feel the heat that had alerted him to its engines. It seemed to be the perfect temperature. And the sound of the wind outside was completely obscured, too.

  But who cared about the temperature and wind?

  This was a goddamn spaceship.

  It looked the part.

  He guessed he was currently in some kind of airlock, and it
looked like it was straight out of a sci-fi film. It wasn’t made from any metal he was familiar with. It was this glossy white, almost liquid substance. And as he took a step back away from the open hatch, it closed, the metal seamlessly pooling over the air outside as if it was wet paint being sloshed over the view.

  Linh chuckled. “Don’t have a heart attack, Harry. If you react like this to my ship, wait until you see the strike vessels.”

  “Strike vessels?”

  “10 of them. It took me a while to get my ship’s sensors operational, but I managed it, and there are 10 Cartaxian strike vessels currently located around the globe.”

  “Who are the Cartaxians?”

  Linh paused at what looked like the secondary airlock into the rest of the ship.

  She didn’t need to make a command – it reacted to her presence. The metal moved exactly like it had before, pooling to the side, acting exactly like a solid metal shouldn’t as it revealed the rest of the ship.

  Linh walked confidently through the now open airlock, and Harry staggered in after her.

  He could see from the outline of her shoulders, from the tension running through her back and up into her jaw, that she was just holding on.

  Maybe Harry shouldn’t push her, but he needed to know absolutely everything she did about this race. Harry wasn’t a scientist. God knows he wasn’t a soldier. He was a cameraman. But over his years of journalism, he’d come to appreciate one fact. Not everybody liked the press, but everybody needed them. Because the press did something society required. It brought people together through news. At its best, the press was a unifying mechanism to bring people together through shared understanding. And that was precisely what humanity needed now.

  “The Cartaxians are an ancient race, one of the protected eight.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Harry, I get that you want to know as much as you can, but if you keep interrupting me, you’ll just slow things down.”

  Linh had always been acerbic. It’s what made her a great interviewer, so Harry didn’t react to her tone.

  He just followed along several steps behind her, trying not to be completely flabbergasted by the ship.

  He didn’t have a great sense of spatial proportions, but he appreciated one thing. This ship was both too long and too wide to fit in the space allocated to it.

  When it had struck those two aliens, it had done so head on, and he’d assumed it would have been no bigger than a large van.

  But now as Linh kept walking through branching corridors, he appreciated it had to be the size of a large house.

  How it sat in the space allocated to it above the road, with the jungle pressing in from both sides, he had no idea.

  But Linh was right – he had far more pressing concerns to think about.

  “To answer your question anyway,” Linh continued, “the protected eight are the eight original races. The very first races in the universe to achieve interstellar travel and push past their own Folds.”

  “You keep speaking about this Fold,” Harry began, then he stopped abruptly. “Sorry for interrupting.”

  Linh didn’t even bother to turn over her shoulder and glower at him. With a breath, she continued, “as such, they’re protected.”

  “Because they’re ancient? Kind of like… I dunno, some kind of ancient wonder of the world?” he continued, appreciating he was sounding more foolish with everything he said but having no way of stopping himself.

  For a man who always worked behind the camera, Harry had always been a babbler.

  “Sure, why not. It’s kind of like that. The modern universe appreciates that the ancient races founded everything, and as such, must be protected.”

  “And the people who are invading us – the Cartaxians,” he said, trying the word out for size and finding it too clunky and sharp for his lips, “are one of these protected races?”

  “I wouldn’t call them people,” Linh said sharply as they came across a door.

  Unlike the other doors she’d already come across, this one didn’t instantly open for her. Instead, Linh had to press a hand forward. She opened her thumb and little finger, and she spread them far wider than an ordinary jointed human could. It was as if she suddenly no longer had bones in her hands. He also saw them – those blue lines he’d seen on her face. They glowed as if they were lines of illumination channeled through some power plant.

  He knew he shouldn’t stare, but at the same time, he couldn’t stop himself.

  Linh didn’t snap at him and rather appeared to concentrate.

  Finally the door reacted to her touch, and right in the center, just in front of her palm, the metal started to peel away. It disappeared toward the edges of the door, traveling in a circle, almost like water falling down the drain.

  Linh didn’t say another word as she walked through the door.

  Though Harry hesitated, he eventually pushed through.

  And he entered… some kind of hub.

  Harry had never been a fan of sci-fi, but he’d seen enough growing up.

  And this room was precisely the kind of get up you’d see in some fifties flick.

  That wasn’t to say it looked cheap as if it was made out of cardboard. It was to say it was a mishmash of sleek and industrial.

  Though there was a wall of consoles on one side, right in the center of the room was a chair, and around it were these black tubes. They almost, at first glance at least, looked as if they were nothing more than flexible ribbed piping used to protect cables in a wall.

  The closer he got, and critically, the closer Linh got, the more they reacted to her. He saw them shift around, as if they were snakes.

  Harry hated snakes.

  Just as he stiffened up, Linh pivoted on her foot, walked backward, and shook her head as she rolled her eyes. “Don’t freak out. They’re simply connectors.” With that, she fell backward into her chair, the apparently uncomfortable metal instantly shifting and molding around her.

  As soon as she appeared comfortable, those apparently innocuous connectors started to shift up the arms and legs of her chair, wrapping around it until they reached her ankles and arms. They started to loop around her, as if they were chains tying her to the spot.

  “What the—” he began.

  “Just relax, Harry. These connectors are what allow me access to the ship’s sensors. It makes for a smoother ride and will enable me to get us out of Da Nang without us being obliterated by that strike ship.”

  “… Okay,” he managed. Again he sounded like an idiot, but you try not sounding like an idiot after learning the damn world was ending.

  There was no view screen in here. And even the consoles on the opposite side of the room didn’t have screens. They appeared to have buttons – or at least glowing symbols embedded in the metal – but that was it.

  Harry didn’t speak again, accurately appreciating that Linh was obviously concentrating on connecting to the ship’s sensors.

  But it was one of the strangest experiences of his life to stand there and wait, incapable of knowing what was going on outside.

  For all he knew, the strike vessel Linh had talked of could be right overhead, about to engage them in a fatal battle.

  Or maybe they’d already made it out of Da Nang. Hell, considering the propulsion capacity this ship would have to have to be capable of interstellar travel, maybe they’d already made it around the other side of the world.

  It took a full five minutes before Linh roused.

  Before she did, her skin started to glow. Whatever mechanism she used to hide her alien cells from the rest of the world obviously either couldn’t run when she was connected to this ship, or was no longer necessary.

  These… luminescent lines appeared all over her skin, making it look as if her blood was made from chopped-up illuminated sapphires.

  It was startling in every way.

  Harry had once been a card-carrying member of the international skeptics society. Now he would have to resc
ind his membership. If, of course, they still existed.

  Working in journalism most of his life, there was one fact Harry appreciated. How damaging a lack of information could be to people, especially when they were facing a critical situation. Good intel – not the lies that were bandied around by sensationalist shock jocks – could often be the difference between life and death. But when you were in a bubble and you could only hear the sound of your own screams, there was nothing to help you unless you could find some way to connect to what was really going on.

  Eventually, Linh opened her eyes. She crossed her legs, those weird connector tubes moving with her. Though they were still fastened around her ankles, they were sufficiently flexible that they shifted, accommodating her move.

  She reached out a finger and tapped her armrest. “We’re out. I think they detected us, but we’ve evaded them now. Plus, it looks like they’re too busy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Again Linh looked at him unflinchingly. “That they’re too busy invading Planet Earth.”

  A cold wave of dread started to strike him, but he managed to shake his head. Then he looked right at her. “Why—”

  “Did I come back?”

  “How did you know that I would ask that? Wait, no, scratch that, that’s what you do, isn’t it? You predict things.”

  “Predicting things is a coarse way to describe it. What a battle brain, such as myself, does is find the accurate path forward.”

  Though Harry had seen enough today to blast his skeptical mind out of the water, it was still a part of him, buried deep in his personality, and it would take more, apparently, than an alien invasion of Earth to completely scour it from his personality. So he frowned hard. “What the hell is an accurate path forward?”

  “A battle brain matches one’s goals to the suitable path forward to attain such a goal.”

  “Fine. I guess. So why did you come back?”

  Linh tilted her head up and looked to the side. Though at first Harry thought she was connecting to the ship again, he realized she was just thinking, and either she’d spent too much time amongst humans and was now copying the exact movements someone would use when they were accessing their critical faculties, or she was just mimicking him to make him feel comfortable.