THE STARS

(SEQUEL TO “EVERBODY’S COCKROACH”)

PROLOGUE

THE sunset was obscured by clouds; the horizon flared crimson for a few moments, and then faded. Slowly evaporating, the red slid into a darker, bloodier color, then on into purple, painting the clouds the color of the ocean below them, and then to black.

The clouds built upon each other, rising higher, darkening, and swelling to the breaking point. The stars, all but swallowed, feebly attempted to lighten the mood of the one lone form crawling along at the head of a lone track of footprints.

The first fat drops of rain fell, slowly becoming strings drawn taught between the sky and the ground, soaking the sand underfoot, and the foot itself. The lone shadow aimlessly listed, a wandering path through the curtains of rain along a beach starkly contrasted in monochrome.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the drenched man briefly. His clothing was soaked to a uniform black, although it bore the variations of clothing that, when dry, was more vibrantly varied.

The flash faded, leaving behind the white beach, the black sky, and the directional glow that was the moon cloaked in clouds. The man looked up, and then continued on.

He reached the mouth of a beaten paved road, and turned onto it. Lining the road were the usual collection of small buildings, some open, some closed, some fallen into disrepair. It was one of this last type that the figure trudged towards. The door rattled ineffectually as his had closed on the corroded knob, but still gave resistance.

He pushed against it, and although the top corner leaned in against his weight, the latch held.

“Damnit, I’m cold,” he muttered through clenched teeth, and slammed a cloth-wrapped fist through the small window in the door. Groping around, his questing hand quickly located the other knob, and unlocked the door. Pushing the door aside, he walked in, his slightly bloody hand now searching the walls around the door jam for a light switch.

Lightning flashed again. In the brief interval of flickering light, another figure was revealed crouching in the muddy dust that covered the mangled floorboards.

“What the hell?” His hand found the switch, but it did nothing. Another flash of lightning, the figure revealed again, but the figure showed no sign of having noticed the intruder, or even any sort of reaction to the steady stream of water that began to leak through the ceiling onto it’s cloaked head. “I said: what the hell,” he stated, but this evoked no reaction from the puddle of deep shadow resting in the midst of the shadows shrouding the space.

He slowly walked towards the amorphous, sheet-swaddled shadow. Even its head was covered, leaving a sort of tunnel in front of the face; effectively masking it’s features. He crouched down, and waved his hand in front of the shadowed visage. “Hello?”

The figure shifted slightly, and the meager moonlight filtering through the grimy window reflected off of the figures eyes.

What the man saw was a brief silver flash deep within the shadowed cowl, a hint of eyes larger than the norm, of eyes the color of steel, of eyes that looked right through him.

The lightning flashed again. He stood slowly, and the figure stood with him. Even though he could no longer see the silver disks, he knew they were fixed to his eyes, and the figure matched his movements. He tilted his head, so did the figure. He took a step, so did the figure.

Then it waved, in the same fashion as he had moments before: the right hand, slowly, back and forth in front of his face.

He reached out, and let his palm touch the gloved palm that wavered in the air. The touch was cold, but unusually dry, considering the rain, and the leaking roof. The man himself was dripping, leaving a puddle on the floor, but the swaddled figure did not seem to notice or care.

“What are you?” He let his fingers intertwine with the, what the hell? Three fingers of the others hand. He realized that the hand was not gloved, but was some kind of extremely dry, tough skin. He felt the strange sensation of too many joints on too-long fingers clenching.

The response to his whispered question was an inhuman shriek.

The dawn broke, and the clouds were all but gone. Spears of orange and pink skewered the dark blue sky. The slight pinprick-stars were bleached into obscurity by the growing day.

The tin-roofed, dilapidated building of the previous night seemed innocuous in the playful light of morning. The grimy window lay in shards beneath its frame. The rickety door hung on one hinge. The dust on the floor was swirled, streaked, as if much quick movement had occurred while it was still wet. The dust was tracked out of the door in long, broken trails, as if by the trailing edge of rags.

The twisted body of an unnamed vagrant lay drowned in its own blood.

The sun climbed high enough into the sky to shine directly though the ruined window. The only footprints were those going into the building.

SEVERAL hours later, another man walked up to the dejected door, and, in attempting to push it aside, wrenched it free of its last hinge. It hit the ground, creating a small cloud of dust. The light inside was dim, compared to the mid-morning sunlight outside, but by no means inadequate.

The man stepped inside.

“Holy shit,” escaped his lips as his eyes adjusted. He cautiously stepped closer, and poked at the corpse with the toe of his boot. When it became apparent that the ravaged figure was not going to spring to life, he lowered himself onto one knee. Rifling through the numerous pockets, he muttered to himself, “Who are you? And more importantly, how much cash you got on you?”

He did not find a wallet, and the contents of the pockets and condition of the clothing signified to him that this man would not be missed. He was a vagrant; no one would care. No need to get involved in anything now was there?

He would hide the body, and move on. After all, if he brought this to the attention of the authorities, he would also bring himself to their attention.

He slid his fingers under the unevenly broken shoulders of the body, and began to drag it towards the door. His shoulder caught on the jam, but he shifted to get around it. In so doing, the body rolled onto its side, and the tongue lolled out of the blue-tinged lips.

“Awe, damn,” he spat, as more blood began to run out, slicking the floor. “How much more blood you got in ya? You already flooded the god-damned floor.”

He kept dragging, leaving a smeared crimson line across the last of the floorboards, and then out into the dust.

Out in the street, a rusted out car on blocks stood forlornly.

“Perfect.” He dragged the body towards the decrepit hulk. Upon reaching it, he slammed his elbow into the lock on the trunk, and then used a screwdriver from his pocket to wrench the lid up, against the rust and dirt that encrusted the hinges. He hauled the body up onto the bumper, and began to force the rapidly stiffening corpse into the inadequate space.

Once he completed this, he turned back to the building. “Nothing,” he muttered, and then his eyes fell upon the tracks. A line of streaked dust led out towards the street, and then was perpetuated by dried mud, presumably from the previous night’s storm.

Being naturally curious, he thought to follow it, but the track made its way along the pavement for about a dozen feet, and then faded, as if the muddied end of a cloak had been scraped free of mud.

“Shit,” he muttered, around a freshly lit cigarette. He turned the other way, and began to walk briskly. After all, even without the body, the bloody floor and the tracks of blood on the pavement were incriminating enough.

The sun set; not as spectacularly as the previous night, for there were no clouds. The moon was bright, erasing the sky around it with a nebulous halo. The stars pierced the nothingness with intent, with no twinkle, but with a hard intensity. The perfect white points aimed down at the silver-black city streets, the moon draining away all color.

Then the moon went out.

Behind the glow of his cigarette, the man endeavored to scrape the crusted blood off of his shirtsleeves.

“Damn bloody son of a bitch,” he said, with no hint of irony in his tone. He clenched his teeth a little harder. “Bastard,” he rubbed his wrists together, bloody cloth on bloody cloth, and this seemed to work. He looked out the window, and saw the stars. He could see a piece of the moon in the top left corner of the window. But the stars; the stars were the brightest he’d seen in a long time. With all the pollutants being pumped into the atmosphere, and all the storms that caused, he could go months at a time without even seeing the stars. “My god…I forgot how beautiful they are,” he said to no one, and stopped working on his sleeves.

Then the moon went out.

His eyes flickered, blinked, and focused. The moon was still gone. The stars were there-the moon was not. The stars that had been obscured by the moons light were there-the moon was not. He had gone months without seeing the stars, but you could always see the moon. He knew something was wrong.

The black ship, the shape of a gargantuan egg, slowly eased itself between the target and the satellite. With hopes that the sudden disappearance of such an important body would cause panic, and therefore draw attention away from what was really happening, the ships fell towards the planet. They would do it right this time.

The scouts had encountered little resistance, paving the way for the mass invasion. Last time, they had hunted prey. This time, they were here to Exterminate. The Maker wanted, the Queen ordered, and the Hive moved. In the name of the Maker, and His voice, the Queen, the Hive was to exterminate the prey; harvest was secondary. They could always find a new Harvest. This prey had proven dangerous.

He reached inside his jacket. His hand fell onto the handle of his antique .38 Special…just in case. He suddenly remembered the body. His eyes flashed wide, and he hurriedly drew the revolver, and began to load it. After fumbling six rounds into the chambers, he replaced the weapon inside his coat, and moved to lock the doors and windows.

Once accomplishing this, he turned on his television.

“From certain angles, it appears that the moon has disappeared,” a news reader said, “but it is in fact a large body moving between the earth and the moon-”

“Like that’s any better?” He reached to turn off the set, but the picture abruptly dissolved into a hissing static. “That can’t be good,” his eyes flicked to the door, then the window. “What could do this?”

The picture returned, barely recognizable, though the static: “We are reminded of an incident several years ago, when a large area of Americas heartland was allegedly ‘invaded’ by aliens, but no reliable recordings or witnesses were found, so the ‘incident’ was disregarded as a mass hoax-” and it seemed to give up, for the picture dissolved entirely into static again, with a sense of finality.

“I remember that,” he whispered to himself. He remembered seeing a video-clip of a mother and her child running, but the camera cut out. Come to think of it, no videos at all…then he looked back at his television, still hissing noisily in the corner.

He turned, and picked up a remote control. Pointing it in the direction of a stereo on a table against the wall, he frantically stabbed at the buttons. His efforts were rewarded by the sound of static.

He looked back out of the window. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see that something was there…and off in the right top corner of the window, there was a blank patch of sky…He remembered a vagrant, not unlike the body earlier in the day…he said he was there…he said that the ships were black, and you couldn’t see them at night…he said that their were so many of them, that you could always see at least two of them, if you could see the sky…he said that he would never forget it…

But to have two this close together, that was far more ships than should be there…

He went towards the door, cautiously. He pressed his face against the wood, in order to see through the tiny window set in the door.

There were no stars.

According to Extermination procedures, the Carrier density was several times that of a Harvest. Instead of ships placed on the horizons, just able to see each other, in a gigantic grid, now the ships were used to make a net. Zero gravity chain mail, surrounding the doomed planet, just as the Maker wanted, and the Queen ordered…so the Hive acted.

The Hive always acted.

CAUTIOUSLY turning the knob, he was surprised to meet sudden resistance. Then he recalled locking the door. Silently cursing his nerves, he turned the lock, and slid the deadbolt, and tried to slip outside as inconspicuously as humanly possible. All the while, he tried to find the stars. He could see city lights reflecting off of something…off of the sky, but no stars.

His hand found its way back to the revolver inside his jacket. As his finger slid along the reassuring cold-steel trigger, a thousand tiny holes filled with light…they looked like stars…

But they were too regular…as if an office building had been uprooted and stretched into a sky…

Doors. They were doors, in the belly of the ship. And each pinpoint went out, and came back on, and went out, and came back on…Thousands of black specks reflected city light, falling towards the layer of invisible dirty clouds that trapped so much heat, and melted the ice caps, and enraged those tree huggers-

But this was worse.

Then the eggs would open, spewing their offspring across the planet, carrying each within it, an army about to hatch. A thousand Killers and a few Builders, a couple of Guards, and each with one Tender and one Master, to make sure they did what they do.

The Hive always acted…

Once the dropships hit dirt, they would unravel, letting loose the eggs. The eggs would fall to the ground, and ingest every attainable resource. This would not only feed them the minimal amount that they needed to hatch, but also it would make the planet bearable, for they were spawned on it, and so they were immune to its poisons, but they were dependent on it as well. After all, once they had done their duty, they could not be returned home. They could not survive anywhere but here, so they were left, as much for necessity as to halt any sort of reformation of the inevitable remnants of Extermination.

The Hive always acted.

The tiny pinpricks fell, and now he could see them, as a cloud of particles, as they entered the denser lower atmosphere, going faster, and each looked like a falling star.

These were not stars.

These were not the stars.

“Not my stars! Those are not my stars!” He screamed.

Without thinking, his hand jerked the revolver out of his jacket, and he began wildly firing into the air. Six earsplitting bangs, then several clicks. He let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding, and tried to put the gun back into his coat, but the heated barrel seared his ribs.

“Shit!”

He settled for sticking it into his belt, careful to point the hot end away from anything important.

The pinpricks had grown into black pustules perched atop newly lit columns of some kind of drive (a giant blue flame) presumably to slow them down. One was much closer than he would have liked any of them to be.

Still several thousand feet up, the pinpricks now had lights, and a definite shape. Each was a smaller version of the gargantuan egg-ships. They fell slower now, as if they were landing, not crashing. Although they did not seem to steer, or turn, the shafts of drive-light made a perfect grid across the sky, as each thousand dropships from each carrier plummeted towards earth.

Without really knowing why, he started running towards where he thought the closest ship would land, reloading his revolver while he ran.

“Shit,” he spat, as he dropped a handful of bullets. He stopped and knelt down, because you never know when you’ll need a few more up your sleeve.

The ships were lower, lower than a plane now, although the planes had probably been grounded by now.

They stopped.

The dropships halted, waited for the order to descend and begin the Extermination. They waited for the scouts to return, one and all, and bring back reports of turmoil and stories of an indecent and ghastly species; tales of heathens.

The last scout was returning. The disc-shaped, un-armed scout ship shot up towards the Carrier. Once it docked, and the last scout shared what he had seen, heard, done, the Extermination could begin.

The Hive always acted…

The small disc slid into its port, and as it settled, a section of its hull slid away, and a sheet-swaddled figure, with spots of dried blood on its arms, dropped onto the immaculately spotless, silver deck.

It was the size of the dominant form of life of the target planet, the one to be Exterminated, but straightened to its full height, accompanied by several disconcerting, internal pops and cracks. This action dislodged many of the sheets, and the rest were torn free by one of the clawed, three-fingered hands. Each finger was about a half a meter long, had six joints, and each was opposable to the other two. The hands were attached to the long, emaciated forearms by incongruously thick wrists.

The whole creature was roughly three meters tall. It looked vaguely like a large praying mantis. Underneath the two main arms were a pair of smaller arms, with no hands, each just tapered into a sharp, straight claw. It had four legs seeming to grow out of its thorax-like back.

Its head was perched atop nonexistent shoulders, roughly triangular, with ovoid, vividly-silver eyes wrapping around to the sides. Two pincer-like mouthparts worked slowly, and the fingers twitched. A piercing shriek emitted from holes along its thorax, and suddenly the entire docking bay was empty, and the dropships visible below resumed their fall, moments later.

THEY fell again. Seconds after resuming their journey, the drives lit up again, slowing their descent. Through all this, they manage to stay at exactly the same level, and maintain perfect formation.

The waves of dropships above the first grew close enough to have windows, and other details, and the closest ship was almost above him. He jerked the revolver out of his belt, and slipped into a dark alley created by two apartment buildings. He crouched behind a rusted-out dumpster.

The ship fell below the level of the roofs, its drive scorching the pavement and igniting the city-maintained trees and shrubs that prettied up the neighborhood.

It hit the asphalt, and sank in a few feet, under its own weight. Cracking the half-melted street, a section of the ship fell down, into a ramp. A many-legged silhouette moved across the opening, and disappeared again back into the depths of the house-sized black egg. Suddenly, a thousand tiny holes opened, and as many basketball-sized, almost-clear spheres dropped out onto the ground. Once touching, each exuded a system of root-like proboscis that dug through the cracks in the asphalt. Inside each sphere, a ball of spidery legs shifted restlessly. The roots began to pulse, as if each egg had a heart beating within it, like a tiny clock, counting down to zero-hour.

From behind the dumpster, he couldn’t hear the sound he was sure the eggs were making…he imagined sloppy, grotesque sounds, like those his stomach made when he was hungry. With every pulse, the roots got bigger, until he could faintly hear a scratching, like blades on canvas. Not at all what he had expected.

That sounded like claws. Claws meant something dangerous. He began to slowly move his thumb towards the safety on his gun. A small click, and then his finger slid across the trigger.

Each egg slowly lost its sheen, seemed to dry off; and grow. He assumed that that meant it was hardening.

Without thinking, his hand jerked up, and his finger squeezed the trigger. A bang, and then a strange sound, and a crack as the bullet impacted the bricks a meter above his head. The eggs were stronger than he had hoped.

He got up and ran down the alley, away from the eggs, their ship, and their spidery caretaker. The huge spider-creature’s head snapped up at the sound, and it let out an anguished cry. As soon as it had made it back into the ship, two larger, more resilient looking creatures emerged, and proceeded to scour the surrounding hundred meters or so.

The retaliation came much sooner than anticipated. Some sort of ineffectual weapon fired, but it did not harm the egg. The Tender, however, was not as armored as the eggs. It quickly crawled inside, and sent its two Guards out of the ship to check the area.

Once they dispatched whatever opposition was in the immediate area, the Tender could return to its duties.

The Hive always acted…

HE ran as fast as he could, and then faster. His breath coming short and quick, his shaking hand replaced the spent bullet. His head jerked back, and far back, at the mouth of the alley, a hulking shadow, with several large limbs that ended in huge claws.

He afforded himself a quick shot of surprised indrawn breath, and looked forward to watch were he was going. Behind him, he thought he heard a breathy wheeze of alarm, and sounds of heavy chitin smacking against pavement.

He heard a small trashcan smashed aside, and another breathy wheeze, with an undertone of great strength. The weakness that comes from those so strong they do not need a voice. This thought fueled his legs, spurring his aching muscles to new plateaus of achievement. He did not notice, however, for his only concern was not being where that thing was.

Just as he smugly realized that he was outrunning that huge freak of nature, his foot caught the pavement. “Shit!”

His eyes went blank for a second or two, as his face impacted the rough, cracked asphalt. He wiped blood off of his brow, but suddenly the creature was on him. How could it move that fast? It had been a hundred meters behind him when he fell…

He was turned over by a large, dark, brown-beige claw. He looked up into a dozen tiny black eyes underneath a heavy, spiky brow, on an absurdly tiny head, perched atop huge shoulders. He noticed that the claw that held him was one of four that all hung at the end of ludicrously long arms that grew from the creature’s back. Another breathy wheeze, and it was a lot louder up close.

He felt his arm slip free of the claw, and it fell across his belt. Slowly twisting, he brought his finger through the trigger guard of the .38 special. In one movement, he wrenched it free and swung his arm up to bring the gun up to rest on the creature’s brow. A quick thought, then he moved it over one of the creature’s right eyes, for it has six total, and squeezed.

He hit the ground hard. He had not realized how high up he had been. That thing must have been about twelve feet tall…

And heavy, he thought, as the monster tipped backwards and smashed into the ground, sending up a wisp of dust that would have been comical, except for the reverberation that it sent through the ground, and the strange fluid that slowly crept from its shattered head. A twitch or two in the monstrous limbs, and then it settled against the asphalt.

“Holy shit,” he whispered as he looked at his gun quizzically. He let out a quick breath, and replaced the bullet, turned, and started running again.

The other Guard heard the breathy wheeze that signified alarm, but it did not sound urgent. He heard the second wheeze, a declaration of victory, and then it twitched up to its full height spasmodically as the high-pitched (too high for human ears) screech reached It, accompanied by a repetition of the sound of the weapon that had been used ineffectually on the eggs. It turned, and lurched towards the sound. Its counterpart was either injured or dead, and the duty of the protection of the rapidly growing Killers now rested squarely atop this Guard’s large, armored shoulders.

It wheezed a guarded warning to the Tender in the doorway of the ship, and a louder declaration of action to the Master behind it, as it went by the ship, and then quickened its pace.

Normally, this kind of rash situation adjustment would be regarded as a threat to the Hive, and the Guard would be terminated, but the Guards that were placed on dropships were always a little different. It should have waited for the Master to acknowledge the situation, and advise the Guard to ascertain what had happened, and then advise on what actions should be taken. But this was an Extermination, and these things had to move quickly.

He stopped, satisfied with his distance from the ship. Looking back, he smiled as his eyes fell upon the corpse of the…creature. The bulbous shadow between the walls of the alley was a kind of trophy, a testament to his strength. But that didn’t get the stars back.

He faintly heard the same breathy wheeze echo down the dank alley. He wasn’t sure he had heard it, for the sound of water dripping into more water was quite loud. He walked briskly, nonetheless.

Then the unmistakable sound of those feet, and he turned in time to see another identical huge figure flying towards him. It had traversed the two hundred meters of alley in a few seconds, due to four dragonfly-reminiscent wings. He raised the gun, but a six meter arm sent a claw half his height into his arm, and the gun clattered away. He felt bones break, as the huge claw connected with the wall, by way of his arm.

He screamed, and felt his fingers mimic the creature’s claw, in agony. He twisted his body, but the claw stayed firmly against the wall. Another flicked out and grabbed his legs, while a third pinned his arms to him as the first let go. Both arms folded on themselves like accordion joints, bringing him close to its dozen black eyes. A tiny mouth opened below, and he strangely wondered exactly how a mouth that small would kill him, when it exuded a foul smelling cloud…that smelled like…smelled like…chlorine.

The Guards too had been bred to the planet, but less carefully. A few samples of the planets life had been taken, and the Guard’s poison sacks had been operated on to contain a solution that would cause temporary nerve damage to any number of species on the planet.

It was this that made sure the spray it emitted would affect the small wriggly creature, and it couldn’t help but feel satisfied when the tiny thing fell limp in its claws.

It turned and began to trudge back towards the dropship, with the small pink creature balanced on its left shoulder. With each step, the soft, disjointed mass bounced, swayed, and jolted disconcertingly. Nothing alive should move that way.

-Cold metal against his back and bright lights though his eyelids painting his vision red with veins and the metal moves or was it him? And now it was against his shoulder and it was still cold and sounds of air and whistles and screeches and the metal slowly warmed up with his body heat because he was there a long time but he was sure how long because his brain was wrapped in cotton and all his skin was wrapped in ice or was numb but it was starting to sting in the way it does when blood starts flowing again and then he could move his face he opened his eyes but his vision was blurry and foggy and all he could see was the metal ramp under his left side and the beige hulk facing the small green blotch-

And he was aware. His eyes focused, and he could see the huge brown hulking thing gesticulating in a complicated way and in the general direction of a smaller creature with a green carapace and a huge head that spilled down its back and pulsed. Its eyes wrapped around its head, and were black but had a read tinge, and he realized that the gas had not totally worn off as a memory of his first roller-skates floated to the top of his consciousness.

A gunshot, and the tiny beige head exploded. Another, and a large part of the other creature’s head flew apart, slimy strings connected to gelatinous chunks rained across him.

A face above his, or to the side, because he was on his side, wasn’t he? She was beautiful, or was she real?

“God, you look like you’ve been drugged,” she cracked the shotgun, and two smoking shells tinkled on the asphalt, and she inserted two more. “Can you walk? I think we should do something about those…egg-thingies.”

“Bullets don’t friggin’ work,” he managed, around another fever dream concerning which way he was currently facing.

“This will,” she pulled a baseball bat out of the back of her belt, or rather half of one…the splintered end had a railroad spike driven through it. She moved off and he heard a sick sound, a sort of crack, but wet. She walked across his field of vision, and in his intoxicated state, his eyes could not resist wandering across her well-formed body. He smiled, and attempted to sit up; he fell off of the ramp. Only during this failed attempt did he notice the almost-clear goo dripping off of the rusty railroad spike and the end of the splintered bat. “It’s working,” she said in a sort of sing-song tone, as if she rather enjoyed what she was doing.

“You got another bat?” He sat up, this time without falling. To his surprise, she tossed him the other half of the bat, with another spike through it. He grabbed it off of the ground where it had fallen, and shakily got to his feet.

He drunkenly moved towards the first egg, and raised the makeshift cudgel. He let out an amused laugh as he brought it down, and the egg cracked. He swung again, and this time it came apart, and a hideous collage of legs and claws and fingers and spines rolled out onto the asphalt.

He laughed again, and moved on.

It took almost half and hour to dispose of all the eggs satisfactorily.

“How many ships were there?” God, even her voice was pretty.

“I didn’t count,” he mumbled, “but there were a helluva lot of ‘em.” He avoided looking directly into her eyes, because she brought him hope. If he looked into her eyes and didn’t see the same hope for living through this, he would know it was hopeless.

“We’d better get to work,” a wry grin.

A joke; don’t mess this up. He laughed, but no too much. Too much and she would think he was still drugged, too little and she would think he was waiting for her to go away.

“your eyes are still red,” she leaned over to look him in the face, for he was facing the ground, “are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t very strong.” He tried to wipe the drying goo off of his bat, but gave up because it was thick and viscous. Disgustedly, he threw the weapon against the side of the egg-ship. A clang, and the sound of wood on asphalt, then silence.

“you might want to pick that up,” she pointed at the broken bat with her own piece of it, and then kicked it towards him. “Never be afraid to get a little dirty,” she said, holding up her own fluid covered arm.

“Let’s get going. There’s gotta be some way to stop this,” he picked up the bat, and then used it to point at the sky, “I mean, its gotta be possible. Otherwise we would all be slaves, or food or something.”

“What?”

“You didn’t hear about it, no one did, but a couple of years ago, this same thing happened in the middle of the country. A bunch of ships, but no record, because they jam all electronics. It’s probably some kind of magnet they use for their drives.”

“You’re not as stupid as you look,” she laughed. She was not the kind of girl that giggled, especially not with a shotgun in her hand.

“I’ll take that as a complement,” he said guardedly. “If you look at the ships, though, each one is a smaller version of the next, so logically there should be one control ship up there somewhere.”

“How do we get there?” As the words left her lips, a sound drew their attention. The caretaker-spider creature, the weak-looking one, had peaked around the edge of the ship, and one of its legs had slipped, causing a sharp sound.

Both of them swung around, drawing their weapons.

The Tender had heard the sounds of carnage just outside the open door, but had been to petrified by fear to even close the door, let alone re-launch the ship to land elsewhere or return to the Carrier.

After the egg breaking had seemingly ceased, it eased itself around the edge of the open door. It started when it saw that the two natives were still there, and one of its walking appendages slipped off of the ramp, making an uncomfortably loud sound. It tried to disappear inside the ship, but the sight of what appeared to be weapons triggered its survival mechanism.

It froze.

“Why isn’t it moving?”

“I don’t know…shoot it.”

Pain, as a hot piece of lead tore through its weak carapace. The shot entered through its left leg-cluster, and exited through the middle of its back. This was sufficient to jolt it into action, and it skittered into the back of the large cabin, trying to disappear behind one of the shaped couches, meant for a Guard.

Thinking quickly, it skittered behind the larger Master chair, and tried to be small.

The natives slowly slunk up the ramp. They seemed cautious, Maker knew why. They should know that they were the new Masters of the situation. Why they seemed wary was not apparent.

The shorter being, the one with the longer hair and larger weapon, pointed directly at the Tender, and raised the weapon. The Tender shrieked for help, involuntarily, for it knew that no others were around to help it.

The one who had noticed the Tender hesitated, its weapon seemed to search, and then a quick siege of pain. And nothing.

She made it onto the ramp first, and pointed: “it’s hiding.”

“Shoot it,” he said as he moved behind her, lifting his own gun in case she did not shoot. This precaution was unnecessary, however, as he realized when her elbow hit his jaw, launched backwards by the recoil from the shot.

“Your arm,” she said, taking his injured right arm into her hands. He had not thought about it since it had been broken.

“I hadn’t noticed,” he flinched as she poked at it.

“It’s broken.”

“I noticed.”

A FEW minutes later, his arm was splinted with one of the pieces of the bat.

“I’m glad you removed the spike first,” he said, right before he flinched when she tightened the bandage.

“You think we can fly this?”

“What?”

“You know. You said there was probably a ship up there. If we can destroy it, this is over, right?”

“In theory…”

“So, if you were a fifteen-foot cockroach, how would you fly a giant egg into space?”

“Uh…efficiently?”

“You’re not good at this,” she laughed, and then started pushing buttons. They did nothing, except one large black one made the ramp tremble. On further inspection, she found out that by holding the button, she made the ramp retract and the door close.

A few more experimental button pushes managed to make the ship jolt uncomfortably. Another tap, and the jolts became continuous.

“I think we made it,” he said sarcastically, as he lay the .38 special on the floor next to her shotgun and the remaining bat. He looked at his arm and said wryly: “I think I could use some more of that nerve gas.”

“Yeah, well. Watcha gonna do?”

“I was planning on complaining for awhile,” as he said this, she pushed another button, and a panel behind him slid away, revealing a huge window. She gaped. “Okay…something in my teeth, right?”

She gestured for him to turn around. His jaw dropped. A cloud of those giant egg-ships surrounded one huge black oval. Those sky-blocking ships were coming out of it like these tiny (in comparison) dropships came out of the…medium sized ships.

“Now we find the weapons,” he said, trying to sound funny, but the fear in his voice showed blatantly.

More buttons…and nothing.

WITHIN five minutes, she had frantically pushed all the buttons. It dawned on them that a landing ship would not have any weapons…and if it did, it would not have weapons capable of destroying its ship of origin.

“What the hell are we gonna do?” She eyed her shotgun, but her eyes betrayed her lack of faith in their previous course of action.

“I really don’t know,” he shoved the dead spider-thing with his foot, just to do something.

The huge ship was getting closer, and they were already flying between many of the medium egg-ships.

“We’re getting close,” she said.

“Can we turn around?”

“I tried that…it’s on some kind of autopilot. We’re going there, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.”

He looked out the window again. “Shit,” when he turned back, she had moved next to him to look outside.

“This was a bad idea,” she picked up the shotgun, then dropped it again. Suddenly, the ship stopped. They saw a drift of steam in front of the ship, so the stop was intentional.

“Maybe the autopilot only goes this far.”

“Maybe,” she moved back to the controls, and started pushing buttons again. Without warning, a strange apparatus exuded from the chair. It had several sets of handles, switches, buttons, and triggers. She poked it with a finger, and it moved, and the ship turned with it. She smiled, and grabbed the “steering wheel,” as she called it, under her breath.

“Where are we gonna go?”

“To the back of the ship,” she accompanied this with a jerk of the “wheel,” and the ship went reeling. “Okay, it’s not like a car.”

“Remember, its zero-gee. Every turn has to be done by attitude jets, and every move won’t stop until you stop it.”

“Gotcha,” she jammed the handles around, making the ship lurch, until she found the throttle. She pushed that as far as it would go, and began moving the tiny egg around to what she thought was the back of the larger ship.

It took almost an hour to traverse the distance, but following the curvature of the giant ship, they were suddenly surprised when the hull disappeared.

“What the…?” He looked down, and a huge conical depression adorned the back of the giant egg. A faint blue glow radiated in its depths. “It’s the drive.”

“If we don’t have weapons, can we do something to that?”

“Yes…but…”

“You mean fly into it.”

“Martyrdom is sweet, but no one will ever know.”

Without further comment, she shoved the throttle forward. The drive cone was not as deep as it looked, and in seconds the glow had grown blinding, and she slammed at the buttons until the window closed.

“This is it,” she said, as she leaned over and kissed him.

THE night sky turned a bright, unnatural blue. The upper atmosphere began to light up like it was the fourth of July, as pieces of starship rained down.

A few minutes later, the glow faded, and the stars cam out.