Synopsis: Aliens have landed on Earth, but they're only here for tourism. Most of them. Alien war machines have just landed and they didn't come in through the front door. One man tries to make sense of the events that are changing his world. He'll need the help of a strange young woman before he is through.
The starship An'toor'ni, still steaming from the heat of atmospheric entry, slipped between two hills just three miles from the northern California coast as gun positions tracked potential targets below. Hemispherical blisters, housing sensors on its curved bronze hull scanned the ground below and confirmed that it flew along the correct landing pattern. Repulsors fired, and the ship's stubby landing gear extended as it settled in to land at the three kilometer expanse of the New Angels starport. The sprawling domes and towers of the port shimmered in the fields of the latest counter-grav technology. No more than three years old, the starport represented the first gift to humanity from the Galactic Hegemony.
Aliens—eagle-headed and feathered
Perigron and lemur-like
Trilli'Ngora—exited the ship as tourists from the GH, following their human guides. Baggage towed behind them, they entered the sweeping curves of the Administration building to receive their Terran passports. A bullet train soon took them away to hotels in nearby Phoenix Bay and the smaller, picturesque town of Stormwatch.
Crouching on a hill in the tall grass beside a bristlecone pine, just one kilometer from the starport, a war machine folded its legs beneath it and watched the activities below. CESR-1088/e, a counter-insurgency scout, had not been processed through New Angels. Its arrival in a heavily stealthed assault lander was illegal according to GH law. The sensors of the starport should have detected such an incursion, but CESR-1088/e and the Expeditionary Unit's lander had easily slipped past the scans. The lander lay buried in the ground, far from the scout's position.
It dug its retractable claws into the hard earth supporting wind-blown scrub. The massive, wolfish head of the machine silently shifted, scanning the area for any probes looking in its direction.
Scan completed, and satisfied that no system sought it, CESR-1088/e stood up. The lupine shape of the machine--five feet at the shoulder--rose high above the grass on all four legs. Its dense coat of mono-filaments, covering the machine like fur, rippled in a light breeze. As the machine jogged easily through the golden grass of the California coast, the mono-filaments changed colors to match the plant life. The hundred-micron strands updated their color constantly, perfectly mimicking the background.
CESR-1088/e disappeared into the scrub as it approached its intended target and fuel, in the small city of Stormwatch.
***
Victor Bantay licked his fingers before turning to the GalTech page of the Stormwatch Chronicle. The wicker loveseat he lounged in, scrounged from a dumpster in nearby Phoenix Bay, protested like a talkative cat as he settled into it.
He squinted in the hot September sun and took a drink from his Mojito before setting it back down on the mosaic of pink and tan stones decorating the sidewalk. Savoring the minty drink, he returned his attention to the paper. The Technology section remained woefully empty. The new advances in Nanotechnology and Genetics listed there had emerged more from Humanity's will to catch up than from any help from the Galactic Hegemony. The stingy aliens had refused to help much, claiming that a sudden leap in technology would surely destabilize Human culture. Vic dropped the paper in his lap in disgust and decided to watch the passersby for a while.
Across the street, a family of four Trilli'Ngora snapped pictures of Sam's Hardware store with its bins of tools on sale outside the door. The Lemur-like Trillies, standing as tall as five feet, spoke to each other in their staccato, musical language. Their long, slender ears flitted around constantly, much like their delicate hands, as much a part of their language as their voices. The young ones, still mottled with cream and gray, hadn't yet developed the black and gray splashes of their parents. With the excess energy of children in any species, the young Trillies insisted on hopping sideways to go anywhere, while the adults calmly walked upright on two legs.
They video-taped everything with their small hand-held cameras. Vic watched them with envy. None of the alien species visiting Earth would give up the secrets to the technology inside. The small boxes were hardly any smaller than what humanity produced, but the storage technology alone, reputed to store one gig of Petaflops, could revolutionize computing on Earth. A dozen other features in the cameras, holographic display for one, completely eluded all known efforts to reverse engineer.
For a moment, Vic fantasized snatching one of the cameras from a youngster and sending it to his former contact in the Teams. But he expected that had already been done. He saw no reason to worsen Human/Alien relations if it didn't produce a worthwhile return. Looking back at the paper, he glanced through another article about an alien, a
Worgren, reported missing. He looked up at the cloudless California sky and offered thanks that the species of the Galactic Hegemony didn't get too upset about it. With their vastly superior technology they could crush Earth like an eggshell if they wanted.
And that's why we have to catch up fast, he thought, taking another sip of Mojito. The Trillie family slowly made their way down the street pointing out objects of interest to each other. They, like most of the three species of aliens visiting Earth, saw humanity as an entertaining tourist attraction, barbarians hardly worth mentioning except at extra-terrestrial cocktail parties. Humanity was safe for the moment, but Vic knew from the history of his native Philippines what must inevitably happen. The less advanced culture would eventually be seen as a resource to be exploited, and then it was doomed.
We have to change the situation soon, he thought.
But how?
***
"Shark" crouched in the darkness of an alley. The ramshackle Pakistani deli on one side and the graffitied Urban Adult Education Center on the other side of him had turned their lights out an hour before at 10PM. He stayed to the shadows, away from the single bare bulb that lit the other end of the alley.
He could see just enough to dig through the purse he'd just stolen. He found $63 in cash and two credit cards. The cell phone he removed slipped in his bloodied hands. He wiped the slick red fluid off on the dank ground and cleaned the phone off on his Death Alien tee-shirt. He grinned through rotting brown teeth. Triton would be happy with him. Still, Shark intended to keep most of the cash for himself. He knew what to do with that. Credit cards and phones were a different problem altogether, one he didn't want to fool with.
He stuffed fifty dollars into his sock. That was for him. The remaining thirteen he slipped into his long, grease stained coat along with the phone and cards. He knew better than to try and give Triton a round amount of cash. The bossman would wonder if he was holding out. Guys like Shark usually didn't live long when Triton started asking questions.
Shark was squeezing the red leather purse into the dumpster beside him when the alley's light flickered. He froze. Slowly, not daring to move any part of his body unnecessarily, he crouched low into the shadows. The light flickered again and he cautiously turned his head to see what it was.
All he could see was a shadow. It was big, but four legs and long ears made it clear the approaching thing was only a dog. Shark relaxed a little. Still moving slowly he slipped a long knife out of his boot. The older, southern side of Stormwatch he hunted in had some feral dogs who could be dangerous if approached. Shark knew how to deal with them. He stood tall and kept the knife ready as he moved to the opposite side of the alley.
The dog kept coming, its shadow growing larger and larger. He still couldn't see it and began to wonder why.
How big could it be to make a shadow like that, he wondered to himself. It didn't make a sound; no whining, no growling, and no clacking of claws. The skin on Shark's neck began to prickle as he realized that something was very wrong.
Staring intensely at the spot where the dog should be, heart racing, his mediocre mind tried in vain to make sense of what was happening. The muscles in his legs quivered, almost rebelling against his confused, unresponsive mind. He started to move a step forward when the air before him shimmered and flickered. The shimmer gained solidity and formed into the head of a giant metallic wolf gazing down upon him. Blue light filled the almond shape of its eyes; patterns like printed circuits shot across the fields of azure. Gleaming metal teeth shone within its gaping jaws, the gun-metal incisors easily reaching four inches long.
Shark's muscles failed him; his knife clattered loudly on the ground as his mind tried to grasp an impossibility. He tried speaking but only managed a whimper.
No way, he thought.
It was his last.
CESR-1088/e struck fast, catching Shark's head in its eighteen-inch long jaws. His skull popped like a balloon. It lifted him by the neck, gulping his body until a metal fang smashed through the right scapula. The criminal's legs began to twitch, fluttering grotesquely in the air. With the body more firmly in its jaws, the machine whipped the bleeding mass through the air and released it. Flying across the alley, the mangled corpse broke the sound barrier before its bones pulped against the brick wall, arms and legs twisted into impossible bends.
A few crushed bricks fell forlornly out of the wall as the machine took the corpse's left leg in its jaws. Grinders in its head spun up and shredded the flesh and bone into a paste. Suction tubes pulled the bloody mass into its fuel centers for processing. Piece by piece, it consumed the body.
When CESR-1088/e finished its work, all that remained of the thief was a blood stain and a few shards of cell phone.
*To be continued*